III
Then he cradled his doll on his crooning heart and cried as a sea-bird cries;
And the hot sun reeled like a drunken god through the violent violet vault:
And the hillside cottage that danced to the deep debauch of the perfumed skies
Grew palsied and white in the purple heath as a pillar of Dead Sea salt.
IV
There were three gaunt sun-flowers nigh his chair: they were yellow as death and tall;
And they threw their sharp blue shadowy stars on the blind white wizard wall;
And they nodded their heads to the weird old hymn that daunted the light of the noon,
Hey! diddle, diddle, the cat and the fiddle, the cow jumped over the moon.
V
The little dog laughed and leered with the white of his eye as he sidled away
To stare at the dwarfish hunchback waves that crawled to the foot of the hill,
For his master's infinite mind was wide to the wealth of the night and the day;
The walls were down: it was one with the Deep that only a God can fill.
VI
Then a tiny maiden of ten sweet summers arrived with a song and a smile,
And she swung on the elfin garden-gate and sung to the sea for a while,
And a phantom face went weeping by and a ghost began to croon
Hey! diddle, diddle, the cat and the fiddle, the cow jumped over the moon.
VII
And she followed a butterfly up to his chair; and the moon-calf caught at her hand
And stared at her wide blue startled eyes and muttered, "My dear, I have been,
In fact, I am there at this moment, I think, in a wonderful fairy-land:"
And he bent and he whispered it low in her ear—"I know why the grass is green.