Explore "D'outre Mort" by Harriet Prescott Spofford on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
A mountain intervale all velveted in green, and half the verdure overlaid with gold by broad rays of sunset falling level through the pass, -- the hills, behind, a gray and gloomy encampment softened with wreaths of vapor and dim recesses of deepest purple, and here and there above the gaps a pale star trembling on the paler blue. In spite of the approaching night, there was a gay glad strength about the scene, so that all who saw it might have felt light at heart, as if the rocky rampart shut out the sorrows of the world and made the charmed valley an enchanted place.
They had been mowing in the intervale; half-formed haycocks, picturesquely piled along the meadows, loaded the air with heavy sweetness; in one, partly overthrown, a lounger lolled luxuriously, singing idly to himself that little Venetian song of Browning's, to some tune delightful as the words: --