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OH the green glimmer of apples in the orchard, | |
Lamps in a wash of rain! | |
Oh the wet walk of my brown hen through the stackyard, | |
Oh tears on the window pane! | |
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Nothing now will ripen the bright green apples, | 5 |
Full of disappointment and of rain, | |
Brackish they will taste, of tears, when the yellow dapples | |
Of autumn tell the withered tale again. | |
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All round the yard it is cluck, my brown hen, | |
Cluck, and the rain-wet wings, | 10 |
Cluck, my marigold bird, and again | |
Cluck for your yellow darlings. | |
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For the grey rat found the gold thirteen | |
Huddled away in the dark, | |
Flutter for a moment, oh the beast is quick and keen, | 15 |
Extinct one yellow-fluffy spark. | |
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Once I had a lover bright like running water, | |
Once his face was laughing like the sky; | |
Open like the sky looking down in all its laughter | |
On the buttercups, and the buttercups was I. | 20 |
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What, then, is there hidden in the skirts of all the blossom? | |
What is peeping from your wings, oh mother hen? | |
Tis the sun who asks the question, in a lovely haste for wisdom; | |
What a lovely haste for wisdom is in men! | |
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Yea, but it is cruel when undressed is all the blossom, | 25 |
And her shift is lying white upon the floor, | |
That a grey one, like a shadow, like a rat, a thief, a rain-storm, | |
Creeps upon her then and gathers in his store. | |
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Oh the grey garner that is full of half-grown apples, | |
Oh the golden sparkles laid extinct! | 30 |
And oh, behind the cloud-sheaves, like yellow autumn dapples, | |
Did you see the wicked sun that winked! | |
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