Volume Ii Part 11 (2/2)

O the treasure-tresses one another over Nodding! O the girdle slack about the waist!

Slain are the poppies that shot their random scarlet Quick amid the wheatears: wound about the waist, Gathered, see these brides of earth one blush of ripeness!

O the nutbrown tresses nodding interlaced!

Large and smoky red the sun's cold disk drops, Clipped by naked hills, on violet shaded snow: Eastward large and still lights up a bower of moon-rise, Whence at her leisure steps the moon aglow.

Nightlong on black print-branches our beech-tree Gazes in this whiteness: nightlong could I.

Here may life on death or death on life be painted.

Let me clasp her soul to know she cannot die!

Gossips count her faults; they scour a narrow chamber Where there is no window, read not heaven or her.

'When she was a tiny,' one aged woman quavers, Plucks at my heart and leads me by the ear.

Faults she had once as she learnt to run and tumbled: Faults of feature some see, beauty not complete.

Yet, good gossips, beauty that makes holy Earth and air, may have faults from head to feet.

Hither she comes; she comes to me; she lingers, Deepens her brown eyebrows, while in new surprise High rise the lashes in wonder of a stranger; Yet am I the light and living of her eyes.

Something friends have told her fills her heart to br.i.m.m.i.n.g, Nets her in her blushes, and wounds her, and tames. - Sure of her haven, O like a dove alighting, Arms up, she dropped: our souls were in our names.

Soon will she lie like a white-frost sunrise.

Yellow oats and brown wheat, barley pale as rye, Long since your sheaves have yielded to the thresher, Felt the girdle loosened, seen the tresses fly.

Soon will she lie like a blood-red sunset.

Swift with the to-morrow, green-winged Spring!

Sing from the South-west, bring her back the truants, Nightingale and swallow, song and dipping wing.

Soft new beech-leaves, up to beamy April Spreading bough on bough a primrose mountain, you Lucid in the moon, raise lilies to the skyfields, Youngest green transfused in silver s.h.i.+ning through: Fairer than the lily, than the wild white cherry: Fair as in image my seraph love appears Borne to me by dreams when dawn is at my eye-lids: Fair as in the flesh she swims to me on tears.

Could I find a place to be alone with heaven, I would speak my heart out: heaven is my need.

Every woodland tree is flus.h.i.+ng like the dogwood, Flas.h.i.+ng like the whitebeam, swaying like the reed.

Flus.h.i.+ng like the dogwood crimson in October; Streaming like the flag-reed South-west blown; Flas.h.i.+ng as in gusts the sudden-lighted whitebeam: All seem to know what is for heaven alone.

THE THREE SINGERS TO YOUNG BLOOD

Carols nature, counsel men.

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