And you would spy and you would capture
The shyest flower that lit the grass:
The joy I had to watch your rapture
Was keen as even your rapture was.
The forest knew you and was glad,
And laughed and wept for joy and woe.
This was the welcome that you had
Among the woods of Fontainebleau.
ON THE HEATH.
HER face’s wilful flash and glow
Turned all its light upon my face
One bright delirious moment’s space,
And then she passed: I followed slow
Across the heath, and up and round,
And watched the splendid death of day
Upon the summits far away,
And in her fateful beauty found
The fierce wild beauty of the light
That startles twilight on the hills,
And lightens all the mountain rills,
And flames before the feet of night.
IN THE ORATORY.
THE incense mounted like a cloud,
A golden cloud of languid scent;
Robed priests before the altar bowed,
Expecting the divine event.
Then silence, like a prisoner bound,
Rose, by a mighty hand set free,
And dazzlingly, in shafts of sound,
Thundered Beethoven’s Mass in C.
She knelt in prayer; large lids serene
Lay heavy on the sombre eyes,
As though to veil some vision seen
Upon the mounts of Paradise.