THE WILD COMMON
THE quick sparks on the gorse bushes are leaping,
Little jets of sunlight-texture imitating flame;
Above them, exultant, the pee-wits are sweeping:
They are lords of the desolate wastes of sadness
their screamings proclaim.
Rabbits, handfuls of brown earth, lie
Low-rounded on the mournful grass they have bitten
down to the quick.
Are they asleep?—Are they alive?—Now see,
when I
Move my arms the hill bursts and heaves under their
spurting kick.
The common flaunts bravely; but below, from the
rushes
Crowds of glittering king-cups surge to challenge the
blossoming bushes;
There the lazy streamlet pushes
Its curious course mildly; here it wakes again, leaps,
laughs, and gushes.
Into a deep pond, an old sheep-dip,
Dark, overgrown with willows, cool, with the brook
ebbing through so slow,
Naked on the steep, soft lip
Of the bank I stand watching my own white shadow
quivering to and fro.
What if the gorse flowers shrivelled and kissing were
lost?
Without the pulsing waters, where were the marigolds
and the songs of the brook?
If my veins and my breasts with love embossed
Withered, my insolent soul would be gone like flowers
that the hot wind took.
So my soul like a passionate woman turns,
Filled with remorseful terror to the man she scorned,
and her love
For myself in my own eyes' laughter burns,
Runs ecstatic over the pliant folds rippling down to
my belly from the breast-lights above.
Over my sunlit skin the warm, clinging air,
Rich with the songs of seven larks singing at once,
goes kissing me glad.
And the soul of the wind and my blood compare
Their wandering happiness, and the wind, wasted in
liberty, drifts on and is sad.
Oh but the water loves me and folds me,
Plays with me, sways me, lifts me and sinks me as
though it were living blood,
Blood of a heaving woman who holds me,
Owning my supple body a rare glad thing, supremely
good.
STUDY
SOMEWHERE the long mellow note of the blackbird
Quickens the unclasping hands of hazel,
Somewhere the wind-flowers fling their heads back,
Stirred by an impetuous wind. Some ways'll
All be sweet with white and blue violet.
(Hush now, hush. Where am I?—Biuret—)
On the green wood's edge a shy girl hovers
From out of the hazel-screen on to the grass,
Where wheeling and screaming the petulant plovers
Wave frighted. Who comes? A labourer, alas!
Oh the sunset swims in her eyes' swift pool.
(Work, work, you fool—!)
Somewhere the lamp hanging low from the ceiling
Lights the soft hair of a girl as she reads,
And the red firelight steadily wheeling
Weaves the hard hands of my friend in sleep.
And the white dog snuffs the warmth, appealing
For the man to heed lest the girl shall weep.
(Tears and dreams for them; for me
Bitter science—the exams. are near.
I wish I bore it more patiently.
I wish you did not wait, my dear,
For me to come: since work I must:
Though it's all the same when we are dead.—
I wish I was only a bust,
All head.)