Outran the
measure, his juice of the woods reclaimed.
He played on men, as his master, Phoebus, on strings
Melodious: as the God did he drive and check,
Through love
exceeding a simple love of the things
That glide in grasses and rubble of woody wreck.
LOVE IN THE VALLEY
Under yonder beech-tree single on the greensward,
Couched with her arms behind her golden head,
Knees and tresses folded to slip and
ripple idly,
Lies my young love
sleeping in the shade.
Had I the heart to slide an arm beneath her,
Press her
parting lips as her waist I gather slow,
Waking in
amazement she could not but
embrace me:
Then would she hold me and never let me go?
* * *
Shy as the
squirrel and
wayward as the
swallow,
Swift as the
swallow along the river's light
Circleting the surface to meet his mirrored winglets,
Fleeter she seems in her stay than in her flight.
Shy as the
squirrel that leaps among the pine-tops,
Wayward as the
swallowoverhead at set of sun,
She whom I love is hard to catch and conquer,
Hard, but O the glory of the
winning were she won!
* * *
When her mother tends her before the laughing mirror,
Tying up her laces, looping up her hair,
Often she thinks, were this wild thing wedded,
More love should I have, and much less care.
When her mother tends her before the lighted mirror,
Loosening her laces, combing down her curls,
Often she thinks, were this wild thing wedded,
I should miss but one for the many boys and girls.
* * *
Heartless she is as the shadow in the meadows
Flying to the hills on a blue and breezy noon.
No, she is athirst and drinking up her wonder:
Earth to her is young as the slip of the new moon.
Deals she an unkindness, 'tis but her rapid
measure,
Even as in a dance; and her smile can heal no less:
Like the swinging May-cloud that pelts the flowers with hailstones
Off a sunny border, she was made to
bruise and bless.
* * *
Lovely are the curves of the white owl
sweepingWavy in the dusk lit by one large star.
Lone on the fir-branch, his rattle-note unvaried,
Brooding o'er the gloom, spins the brown eve-jar.
Darker grows the
valley, more and more forgetting:
So were it with me if forgetting could be willed.
Tell the
grassy hollow that holds the bubbling well-spring,
Tell it to forget the source that keeps it filled.
* * *
Stepping down the hill with her fair companions,
Arm in arm, all against the raying West,
Boldly she sings, to the merry tune she marches,
Brave in her shape, and sweeter unpossessed.
Sweeter, for she is what my heart first awaking
Whispered the world was; morning light is she.
Love that so desires would fain keep her changeless;
Fain would fling the net, and fain have her free.
* * *
Happy happy time, when the white star hovers
Low over dim fields fresh with bloomy dew,
Near the face of dawn, that draws athwart the darkness,
Threading it with colour, like yewberries the yew.
Thicker crowd the shades as the grave East deepens
Glowing, and with
crimson a long cloud swells.
Maiden still the morn is; and strange she is, and secret;
Strange her eyes; her cheeks are cold as cold sea-shells.
* * *
Sunrays, leaning on our southern hills and lighting
Wild cloud-mountains that drag the hills along,
Oft ends the day of your shifting
brilliantlaughterChill as a dull face frowning on a song.
Ay, but shows the South-west a
ripple-feathered bosom
Blown to silver while the clouds are
shaken and ascend
Scaling the mid-heavens as they
stream, there comes a sunset
Rich, deep like love in beauty without end.
* * *
When at dawn she sighs, and like an
infant to the window
Turns grave eyes
craving light, released from dreams,
Beautiful she looks, like a white water-lily
Bursting out of bud in havens of the
streams.
When from bed she rises clothed from neck to ankle
In her long nightgown sweet as boughs of May,
Beautiful she looks, like a tall garden lily
Pure from the night, and splendid for the day.
* * *
Mother of the dews, dark eye-lashed
twilight,
Low-lidded
twilight, o'er the
valley's brim,
Rounding on thy breast sings the dew-delighted skylark,
Clear as though the dewdrops had their voice in him.
Hidden where the rose-flush drinks the rayless planet,
Fountain-full he pours the spraying fountain-
showers.
Let me hear her
laughter, I would have her ever
Cool as dew in
twilight, the lark above the flowers.
* * *
All the girls are out with their baskets for the primrose;
Up lanes, woods through, they troop in
joyful bands.
My sweet leads: she knows not why, but now she loiters,
Eyes bent anemones, and hangs her hands.
Such a look will tell that the
violets are peeping,
Coming the rose: and
unaware a cry
Springs in her bosom for odours and for colour,
Covert and the
nightingale; she knows not why.
* * *
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 breasts the iron gate-way:
She is forth to cheer a neighbour
lacking mirth.
So when sky and grass 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, blushing 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 grass-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 shine:
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
Shift 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 grass 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 sunshine;
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!
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
chamberWhere 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.