Volume Ii Part 11 (1/2)

Kerchiefed head and chin, she darts between her tulips, Streaming like a willow grey in arrowy rain: Some bend beaten cheek to gravel, and their angel She will be; she lifts them, and on she speeds again.

Black the driving raincloud b.r.e.a.s.t.s the iron gate-way: She is forth to cheer a neighbour lacking mirth.

So when sky and gra.s.s met rolling dumb for thunder, Saw I once a white dove, sole light of earth.

Prim little scholars are the flowers of her garden, Trained to stand in rows, and asking if they please.

I might love them well but for loving more the wild ones.

O my wild ones! they tell me more than these.

You, my wild one, you tell of honied field-rose, Violet, blus.h.i.+ng eglantine in life; and even as they, They by the wayside are earnest of your goodness, You are of life's, on the banks that line the way.

Peering at her chamber the white crowns the red rose, Jasmine winds the porch with stars two and three.

Parted is the window; she sleeps; the starry jasmine Breathes a falling breath that carries thoughts of me.

Sweeter unpossessed, have I said of her my sweetest Not while she sleeps: while she sleeps the jasmine breathes, Luring her to love; she sleeps; the starry jasmine Bears me to her pillow under white rose-wreaths.

Yellow with birdfoot-trefoil are the gra.s.s-glades; Yellow with cinquefoil of the dew-grey leaf: Yellow with stonecrop; the moss-mounds are yellow; Blue-necked the wheat sways, yellowing to the sheaf.

Green-yellow, bursts from the copse the laughing yaffle; Sharp as a sickle is the edge of shade and s.h.i.+ne: Earth in her heart laughs looking at the heavens, Thinking of the harvest: I look and think of mine.

This I may know: her dressing and undressing Such a change of light shows as when the skies in sport s.h.i.+ft from cloud to moonlight; or edging over thunder Slips a ray of sun; or sweeping into port White sails furl; or on the ocean borders White sails lean along the waves leaping green.

Visions of her shower before me, but from eyesight Guarded she would be like the sun were she seen.

Front door and back of the mossed old farmhouse Open with the morn, and in a breezy link Freshly sparkles garden to stripe-shadowed orchard, Green across a rill where on sand the minnows wink.

Busy in the gra.s.s the early sun of summer Swarms, and the blackbird's mellow fluting notes Call my darling up with round and roguish challenge: Quaintest, richest carol of all the singing throats!

Cool was the woodside; cool as her white dairy Keeping sweet the cream-pan; and there the boys from school, Cricketing below, rushed brown and red with suns.h.i.+ne; O the dark translucence of the deep-eyed cool!

Spying from the farm, herself she fetched a pitcher Full of milk, and tilted for each in turn the beak.

Then a little fellow, mouth up and on tiptoe, Said, 'I will kiss you': she laughed and leaned her cheek.

Doves of the fir-wood walling high our red roof Through the long noon coo, crooning through the coo.

Loose droop the leaves, and down the sleepy road-way Sometimes pipes a chaffinch; loose droops the blue.

Cows flap a slow tail knee-deep in the river, Breathless, given up to sun and gnat and fly.

Nowhere is she seen; and if I see her nowhere, Lightning may come, straight rains and tiger sky.

O the golden sheaf, the rustling treasure-armful!

O the nutbrown tresses nodding interlaced!