LITMIR.BIZ

      When friendly summer calls again,

            Calls again

      Her little fifers to these hills,

      We’ll go – we two – to that arched fane

      Of leafage where they prime their bills

      Before they start to flood the plain

      With quavers, minims, shakes, and trills.

         “ – We’ll go,” I sing; but who shall say

         What may not chance before that day!

      And we shall see the waters spring,

            Waters spring

      From chinks the scrubby copses crown;

      And we shall trace their oncreeping

      To where the cascade tumbles down

      And sends the bobbing growths aswing,

      And ferns not quite but almost drown.

         “ – We shall,” I say; but who may sing

         Of what another moon will bring!

      Past the hills that peep

      Where the leaze is smiling,

      On and on beguiling

      Crisply-cropping sheep;

      Under boughs of brushwood

      Linking tree and tree

      In a shade of lushwood,

         There caressed we!

      Hemmed by city walls

      That outshut the sunlight,

      In a foggy dun light,

      Where the footstep falls

      With a pit-pat wearisome

      In its cadency

      On the flagstones drearisome

         There pressed we!

      Where in wild-winged crowds

      Blown birds show their whiteness

      Up against the lightness

      Of the clammy clouds;

      By the random river

      Pushing to the sea,

      Under bents that quiver

         There rest we.

      At nine in the morning there passed a church,

      At ten there passed me by the sea,

      At twelve a town of smoke and smirch,

      At two a forest of oak and birch,

         And then, on a platform, she:

      A radiant stranger, who saw not me.

      I queried, “Get out to her do I dare?”

      But I kept my seat in my search for a plea,

      And the wheels moved on. O could it but be

         That I had alighted there!

            I thought you a fire

         On Heron-Plantation Hill,

      Dealing out mischief the most dire

         To the chattels of men of hire

            There in their vill.

            But by and by

         You turned a yellow-green,

      Like a large glow-worm in the sky;

         And then I could descry

            Your mood and mien.

            How well I know

         Your furtive feminine shape!

      As if reluctantly you show

         You nude of cloud, and but by favour throw

            Aside its drape.

            – How many a year

         Have you kept pace with me,

      Wan Woman of the waste up there,

         Behind a hedge, or the bare

            Bough of a tree!

            No novelty are you,

         O Lady of all my time,

      Veering unbid into my view

         Whether I near Death’s mew,

            Or Life’s top cyme!

      Its former green is blue and thin,

      And its once firm legs sink in and in;

      Soon it will break down unaware,

      Soon it will break down unaware.

      At night when reddest flowers are black

      Those who once sat thereon come back;

      Quite a row of them sitting there,

      Quite a row of them sitting there.

      With them the seat does not break down,

      Nor winter freeze them, nor floods drown,

      For they are as light as upper air,

      They are as light as upper air!

      He said: “Awake my soul, and with the sun,”.

      And paused upon the bridge, his eyes due east,

      Where was emerging like a full-robed priest

      The irradiate globe that vouched the dark as done.

      It lit his face – the weary face of one

      Who in the adjacent gardens charged his string,

      Nightly, with many a tuneful tender thing,

      Till stars were weak, and dancing hours outrun.

      And then were threads of matin music spun

      In trial tones as he pursued his way:

      “This is a morn,” he murmured, “well begun:

      This

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