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| UNDER yonder beech-tree single on the green-sward, | |
| Couch’d 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, | 5 |
| 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 | 10 |
| Circleting the surface to meet his mirror’d winglets, | |
| Fleeter she seems in her stay than in her flight. | |
| Shy as the squirrel that leaps among the pine-tops, | |
| Wayward as the swallow overhead at set of sun, | |
| She whom I love is hard to catch and conquer, | 15 |
| 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. | 20 |
| 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 many boys and girls. · · · | |
| Heartless she is as the shadow in the meadows | 25 |
| 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: | 30 |
| 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 sweeping | |
| Wavy in the dusk lit by one large star. | |
| Lone on the fir-branch, his rattle-note unvaried, | 35 |
| Brooding o’er the gloom, spins the brown evejar. | |
| Darker grows the valley, more and more forgetting: | |
| So were it with me if forgetting could be will’d. | |
| Tell the grassy hollow that holds the bubbling well-spring, | |
| Tell it to forget the source that keeps it fill’d. · · · | 40 |
| 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 is her shape, and sweeter unpossess’d. | |
| Sweeter, for she is what my heart first awaking | 45 |
| Whisper’d 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, | 50 |
| 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; | 55 |
| 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 brilliant laughter | |
| Chill as a dull face frowning on a song. | 60 |
| Ay, but shows the South-west a ripple-feather’d 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 | 65 |
| 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, | 70 |
| Beautiful she looks, like a tall garden-lily | |
| Pure from the night, and splendid for the day. · · · | |
| Mother of the dews, dark eye-lash’d twilight, | |
| Low-lidded twilight, o’er the valley’s brim, | |
| Rounding on thy breast sings the dew-delighted skylark, | 75 |
| Clear as through 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. · · · | 80 |
| 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 the bent anemones, and hangs her hands. | |
| Such a look will tell that the violets are peeping, | 85 |
| Coming the rose: and unaware a cry | |
| Springs in her bosom for odours and for colour, | |
| Covert and the nightingale; she knows not why. · · · | |
| Kerchief’d head and chin she darts between her tulips, | |
| Streaming like a willow gray in arrowy rain: | 90 |
| 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 gateway: | |
| She is forth to cheer a neighbour lacking mirth. | |
| So when sky and grass met rolling dumb for thunder | 95 |
| Saw I once a white dove, sole light of earth. · · · | |
| Prim little scholars are the flowers of her garden, | |
| Train’d 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. | 100 |
| 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, | 105 |
| 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 unpossess’d, have I said of her my sweetest? | |
| Not while she sleeps: while she sleeps the jasmine breathes, | 110 |
| 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-gray leaf; | |
| Yellow with stonecrop; the moss-mounds are yellow; | 115 |
| Blue-neck’d 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. · · · | 120 |
| 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 | 125 |
| 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 moss’d old farmhouse | |
| Open with the morn, and in a breezy link | 130 |
| Freshly sparkles garden to stripe-shadow’d 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: | 135 |
| 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, rush’d brown and red with sunshine; | |
| O the dark translucence of the deep-eyed cool! | 140 |
| Spying from the farm, herself she fetch’d 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 laugh’d and lean’d her cheek. · · · | |
| Doves of the fir-wood walling high our red roof | 145 |
| Through the long noon coo, crooning through the coo. | |
| Loose droop the leaves, and down the sleepy roadway | |
| 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. | 150 |
| 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 | 155 |
| Nodding! O the girdle slack about the waist! | |
| Slain are the poppies that shot their random scarlet | |
| Quick amid the wheat-ears: wound about the waist, | |
| Gather’d, see these brides of Earth one blush of ripeness! | |
| O the nutbrown tresses nodding interlaced! · · · | 160 |
| Large and smoky red the sun’s cold disk drops, | |
| Clipp’d by naked hills, on violet shaded snow: | |
| Eastward large and still lights up a bower of moonrise, | |
| Whence at her leisure steps the moon aglow. | |
| Nightlong on black print-branches our beech-tree | 165 |
| 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 chamber | |
| Where there is no window, read not heaven or her. | 170 |
| ‘When she was a tiny,’ one agèd woman quavers, | |
| Plucks at my heart and leads me by the ear. | |
| Faults she had once as she learn’d to run and tumbled: | |
| Faults of feature some see, beauty not complete. | |
| Yet, good gossips, beauty that makes holy | 175 |
| 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. | 180 |
| 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 dropp’d: our souls were in our names. · · · | |
| Soon will she lie like a white frost sunrise. | 185 |
| Yellow oats and brown wheat, barley pale as rye, | |
| Long since your sheaves have yielded to the thresher, | |
| Felt the girdle loosen’d, seen the tresses fly. | |
| Soon will she lie like a blood-red sunset. | |
| Swift with the to-morrow, green-wing’d Spring! | 190 |
| 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, | 195 |
| 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 eyelids: | |
| Fair as in the flesh she swims to me on tears. · · · | 200 |
| 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; | 205 |
| 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. | |
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