10. A Prayer in Spring   
   
   
OH, give us pleasure in the flowers to-day;      
And give us not to think so far away      
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here      
All simply in the springing of the year.      
   
Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white,           5   
Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night;      
And make us happy in the happy bees,      
The swarm dilating round the perfect trees.      
   
And make us happy in the darting bird      
That suddenly above the bees is heard,           10   
The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill,      
And off a blossom in mid air stands still.      
   
For this is love and nothing else is love,      
The which it is reserved for God above      
To sanctify to what far ends He will,           15   
But which it only needs that we fulfil.

11. Flower-gathering   
   
   
I LEFT you in the morning,      
And in the morning glow,      
You walked a way beside me      
To make me sad to go.      
Do you know me in the gloaming,           5   
Gaunt and dusty grey with roaming?      
Are you dumb because you know me not,      
Or dumb because you know?      
   
All for me? And not a question      
For the faded flowers gay           10   
That could take me from beside you      
For the ages of a day?      
They are yours, and be the measure      
Of their worth for you to treasure,      
The measure of the little while           15   
That I’ve been long away.      

12. Rose Pogonias   
   
   
A SATURATED meadow,      
  Sun-shaped and jewel-small,      
A circle scarcely wider      
  Than the trees around were tall;      
Where winds were quite excluded,           5   
  And the air was stifling sweet      
With the breath of many flowers,—      
  A temple of the heat.      
   
There we bowed us in the burning,      
  As the sun’s right worship is,           10   
To pick where none could miss them      
  A thousand orchises;      
For though the grass was scattered,      
  Yet every second spear      
Seemed tipped with wings of color,           15   
  That tinged the atmosphere.      
   
We raised a simple prayer      
  Before we left the spot,      
That in the general mowing      
  That place might be forgot;           20   
Or if not all so favoured,      
  Obtain such grace of hours,      
That none should mow the grass there      
  While so confused with flowers.      

13. Asking for Roses   
   
   
A HOUSE that lacks, seemingly, mistress and master,      
  With doors that none but the wind ever closes,      
Its floor all littered with glass and with plaster;      
  It stands in a garden of old-fashioned roses.      
   
I pass by that way in the gloaming with Mary;           5   
  ‘I wonder,’ I say, ‘who the owner of those is.      
‘Oh, no one you know,’ she answers me airy,      
  ‘But one we must ask if we want any roses.’      
   
So we must join hands in the dew coming coldly      
  There in the hush of the wood that reposes,           10   
And turn and go up to the open door boldly,      
  And knock to the echoes as beggars for roses.      
   
‘Pray, are you within there, Mistress Who-were-you?’      
  ’Tis Mary that speaks and our errand discloses.      
‘Pray, are you within there? Bestir you, bestir you!           15   
  ’Tis summer again; there’s two come for roses.      
   
‘A word with you, that of the singer recalling—      
  Old Herrick: a saying that every maid knows is      
A flower unplucked is but left to the falling,      
  And nothing is gained by not gathering roses.’           20   
   
We do not loosen our hands’ intertwining      
  (Not caring so very much what she supposes),      
There when she comes on us mistily shining      
  And grants us by silence the boon of her roses.      

   
14. Waiting   
   
Afield at Dusk   
   
   
WHAT things for dream there are when spectre-like,      
Moving among tall haycocks lightly piled,      
I enter alone upon the stubble field,      
From which the laborers’ voices late have died,      
And in the antiphony of afterglow           5   
And rising full moon, sit me down      
Upon the full moon’s side of the first haycock      
And lose myself amid so many alike.      
   
I dream upon the opposing lights of the hour,      
Preventing shadow until the moon prevail;           10   
I dream upon the night-hawks peopling heaven,      
Each circling each with vague unearthly cry,      
Or plunging headlong with fierce twang afar;      
And on the bat’s mute antics, who would seem      
Dimly to have made out my secret place,           15   
Only to lose it when he pirouettes,      
And seek it endlessly with purblind haste;      
On the last swallow’s sweep; and on the rasp      
In the abyss of odor and rustle at my back,      
That, silenced by my advent, finds once more,           20   
After an interval, his instrument,      
And tries once—twice—and thrice if I be there;      
And on the worn book of old-golden song      
I brought not here to read, it seems, but hold      
And freshen in this air of withering sweetness;           25   
But on the memory of one absent most,      
For whom these lines when they shall greet her eye.      

15. In a Vale   
   
   
WHEN I was young, we dwelt in a vale      
  By a misty fen that rang all night,      
And thus it was the maidens pale      
I knew so well, whose garments trail      
  Across the reeds to a window light.           5   
   
The fen had every kind of bloom,      
  And for every kind there was a face,      
And a voice that has sounded in my room      
Across the sill from the outer gloom.      
  Each came singly unto her place,           10   
   
But all came every night with the mist;      
  And often they brought so much to say      
Of things of moment to which, they wist,      
One so lonely was fain to list,      
  That the stars were almost faded away           15   
   
Before the last went, heavy with dew,      
  Back to the place from which she came—      
Where the bird was before it flew,      
Where the flower was before it grew,      
  Where bird and flower were one and the same.           20   
   
And thus it is I know so well      
  Why the flower has odor, the bird has song.      
You have only to ask me, and I can tell.      
No, not vainly there did I dwell,      
  Nor vainly listen all the night long.           25

16. A Dream Pang   
   
   
I HAD withdrawn in forest, and my song      
Was swallowed up in leaves that blew alway;      
And to the forest edge you came one day      
(This was my dream) and looked and pondered long,      
But did not enter, though the wish was strong:           5   
You shook your pensive head as who should say,      
‘I dare not—too far in his footsteps stray—      
He must seek me would he undo the wrong.      
   
Not far, but near, I stood and saw it all      
Behind low boughs the trees let down outside;           10   
And the sweet pang it cost me not to call      
And tell you that I saw does still abide.      
But ’tis not true that thus I dwelt aloof,      
For the wood wakes, and you are here for proof.

   
17. In Neglect   
   
   
THEY leave us so to the way we took,      
  As two in whom they were proved mistaken,      
That we sit sometimes in the wayside nook,      
With mischievous, vagrant, seraphic look,      
  And try if we cannot feel forsaken.           5

18. The Vantage Point   
   
   
IF tired of trees I seek again mankind,      
  Well I know where to hie me—in the dawn,      
  To a slope where the cattle keep the lawn.      
There amid lolling juniper reclined,      
Myself unseen, I see in white defined           5   
  Far off the homes of men, and farther still,      
  The graves of men on an opposing hill,      
Living or dead, whichever are to mind.      
   
And if by moon I have too much of these,      
  I have but to turn on my arm, and lo,           10   
  The sun-burned hillside sets my face aglow,      
My breathing shakes the bluet like a breeze,      
  I smell the earth, I smell the bruisèd plant,      
  I look into the crater of the ant.

19. Mowing   
   
   
THERE was never a sound beside the wood but one,      
And that was my long scythe whispering to the ground.      
What was it it whispered? I knew not well myself;      
Perhaps it was something about the heat of the sun,      
Something, perhaps, about the lack of sound—           5   
And that was why it whispered and did not speak.      
It was no dream of the gift of idle hours,      
Or easy gold at the hand of fay or elf:      
Anything more than the truth would have seemed too weak      
To the earnest love that laid the swale in rows,           10   
Not without feeble-pointed spikes of flowers      
(Pale orchises), and scared a bright green snake.      
The fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows.      
My long scythe whispered and left the hay to make.