The Bear

It was a lumbering, heavy mirror,
Deliberate, amid the trees alone,
Shining as secrets held—so still,
That I sung below the twilight’s home.
Oh, brown bear of the mountain flow,
How did you wander away so high?
Where shadows sketch, and twilight grows—
I stand above, and fading sighs
Come from the river far away,
Where eve lights turn the moose below.
Yet, as you roam the hills til eve,
My thoughts join yours, in times of glow.

• Sarah Orne Jewett