A Picture in watercolour by Tennyson.

The fire had come and gone.
The gold sparkled, among the serene greens and pinks and forgotten yellows of the countryside.
Waterlilies glistened pale, white and yellow and forgetful, on the banks.
The willows bent right over and wept their long, slow tears into their rippling selves below.
Their long, gentle drooping branches formed an arch beneath whish she walked to the shore.
There, gently bobbing on stray ripples in the fold of a willow-root, was a little gray boat.
It gleamed faintly, she stepped in, and then it made a foray into mid-current.
She looked up, for a second, looking quietly around, like a blind man who does realise he is blind.
She lay down, her motion barely disturbing the boat, which drifted, as in a dream, slowly downstream.
And then she sang.
A haunting tune, a simple tune, continuous somehow with the autumn and the dusk.
The pale, fading evening was her song, that fades into night without a break.
It sounded in the ears of the methodical reapers, and it seemed to them to go on, even after night had fallen upon them, and the sound had gone from the fields and the sky.
The boat floated on, the deep grey currents and eddies carried it on.
The gray houses rose out of the imminent darkness.
The song was in the air, and in the water, and in her white face and streaming hair.
The paleness of her cheek was silence.
Dark grey shapes of men gathered by the riverside to watch her pass.
The murmured darkly and their hands formed crosses in the half-light.
She did not hear.
It seemed, as she passed, the dancing candles were snuffed out.
The city, poised in celebration, took up her silence.
Grey mist entered the air, and the faces, and the thoughts, of all but one.
He looked with thoughtful face upon the lost beauty drifting past.
He whispered a blessing;
A cloud was over the sun.