| |
| ROUND clouds roll in the arms of the wind, | |
| The round earth rolls in a clasp of blue sky, | |
| And see, where the budding hazels are thinned, | |
| The wild anemones lie | |
| In undulating shivers beneath the wind. | 5 |
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| Over the blue of the waters ply | |
| White ducks, a living flotilla of cloud; | |
| And, look you, floating just thereby, | |
| The blue-gleamed drake stems proud | |
| Like Abraham, whose seed should multiply. | 10 |
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| In the lustrous gleam of the water, there | |
| Scramble seven toads across the silk, obscure leaves, | |
| Seven toads that meet in the dusk to share | |
| The darkness that interweaves | |
| The sky and earth and water and live things everywhere. | 15 |
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| Look now, through the woods where the beech-green spurts | |
| Like a storm of emerald snow, look, see | |
| A great bay stallion dances, skirts | |
| The bushes sumptuously, | |
| Going outward now in the spring to his brief deserts. | 20 |
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| Ah love, with your rich, warm face aglow, | |
| What sudden expectation opens you | |
| So wide as you watch the catkins blow | |
| Their dust from the birch on the blue | |
| Lift of the pulsing windah, tell me you know! | 25 |
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| Ah, surely! Ah, sure from the golden sun | |
| A quickening, masculine gleam floats in to all | |
| Us creatures, people and flowers undone, | |
| Lying open under his thrall, | |
| As he begets the year in us. What, then, would you shun? | 30 |
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| Why, I should think that from the earth there fly | |
| Fine thrills to the neighbour stars, fine yellow beams | |
| Thrown lustily off from our full-blown, high | |
| Bursting globe of dreams, | |
| To quicken the spheres that are virgin still in the sky. | 35 |
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| Do you not hear each morsel thrill | |
| With joy at travelling to plant itself within | |
| The expectant one, therein to instil | |
| New rapture, new shape to win, | |
| From the thick of life wake up another will? | 40 |
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| Surely, and if that I would spill | |
| The vivid, ah, the fiery surplus of life, | |
| From off my brimming measure, to fill | |
| You, and flush you rife | |
| With increase, do you call it evil, and always evil? | 45 |
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