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 brimming,
     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 shining 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 flushing like the dogwood,
     Flashing like the whitebeam, swaying like the reed. 
     Flushing like the dogwood crimson in October;
     Streaming like the flag-reed South-west blown;
     Flashing 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. 
     Different notes as rook from wren
     Hear we when our steps begin,
     And the choice is cast within,
     Where a robber raven’s tale
     Urges passion’s nightingale.

     Hark to the three.  Chimed they in one,
     Life were music of the sun. 
     Liquid first, and then the caw,
     Then the cry that knows not law.

     I