From a Train at Dusk

J. E. Scruggs

Something has happened, something has come to pass,
Something intense has seized upon the land
Where darkness drops as surely as the sand
That pours out doom in the inverted glass.
What has put terror in the meadow grass?
What spectral messenger, on every hand
Spreads tidings which no blade can understand
From this dark field down to that black morass?

Across the murk a startled group of trees
Leans close together, tense and shivering,
Bent bodies merging with the dusk and chill.
One lone last cloud on the horizon flees;
And look!—withdrawing, like a guilty thing,
The bowed hulk of a dim and distant hill.