“Boston Common at Twilight” (1885–86) (oil on canvas), by Childe Hassam, at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
A silence slipping around like death,
Yet chased by a whisper, a sigh,
a breath; One group of trees, lean,
naked and cold,
Inking their cress 'gainst a
sky green-gold;
One path that knows where the
corn flowers were;
Lonely, apart, unyielding, one fir;
And over it softly leaning down,
One star that I loved ere the
fields went brown.
— “A Winter Twilight,’’ by Angelina Weld Grimke (1880-1958), a Boston poet
