|
ROUND clouds roll in the arms of the wind, | |
The round earth rolls in a clasp of blue sky, | |
And see, where the budding hazels are thinned, | |
The wild anemones lie | |
In undulating shivers beneath the wind. | 5 |
|
Over the blue of the waters ply | |
White ducks, a living flotilla of cloud; | |
And, look you, floating just thereby, | |
The blue-gleamed drake stems proud | |
Like Abraham, whose seed should multiply. | 10 |
|
In the lustrous gleam of the water, there | |
Scramble seven toads across the silk, obscure leaves, | |
Seven toads that meet in the dusk to share | |
The darkness that interweaves | |
The sky and earth and water and live things everywhere. | 15 |
|
Look now, through the woods where the beech-green spurts | |
Like a storm of emerald snow, look, see | |
A great bay stallion dances, skirts | |
The bushes sumptuously, | |
Going outward now in the spring to his brief deserts. | 20 |
|
Ah love, with your rich, warm face aglow, | |
What sudden expectation opens you | |
So wide as you watch the catkins blow | |
Their dust from the birch on the blue | |
Lift of the pulsing windah, tell me you know! | 25 |
|
Ah, surely! Ah, sure from the golden sun | |
A quickening, masculine gleam floats in to all | |
Us creatures, people and flowers undone, | |
Lying open under his thrall, | |
As he begets the year in us. What, then, would you shun? | 30 |
|
Why, I should think that from the earth there fly | |
Fine thrills to the neighbour stars, fine yellow beams | |
Thrown lustily off from our full-blown, high | |
Bursting globe of dreams, | |
To quicken the spheres that are virgin still in the sky. | 35 |
|
Do you not hear each morsel thrill | |
With joy at travelling to plant itself within | |
The expectant one, therein to instil | |
New rapture, new shape to win, | |
From the thick of life wake up another will? | 40 |
|
Surely, and if that I would spill | |
The vivid, ah, the fiery surplus of life, | |
From off my brimming measure, to fill | |
You, and flush you rife | |
With increase, do you call it evil, and always evil? | 45 |
|