A Sunset Breeze

All of the livelong day there was scarcely a rustle of leaves,
The writhing river burned like a molten serpent of fire;
The reaper dropped his scythe, and the binder fled from his sheaves,
And a breeze on the throbbing brow was the world's supreme desire.

When the disk of the sun dipped down there sprang from out of the west
A sudden wafture of wind that crinkled the unmown grain;
The kine were glad in the field, and the bird was glad on the nest,
And the heart of the mother leaped that her prayer was not in vain.

For the sunset breeze stole in with healing up,on its breath,
Winnowed the fevered air with a single sweetening sweep;
Out of the back-swung door slipped the pallid angel of death,
And lo, as the mother knelt, the baby smiled in its sleep!