* * *

     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.