While still the swallow, with unbaffled grace,
About his viewless quarry dips and bends—
And all the fine excitement of the chase
Lies in the hunter’s beauty; in the eclipse
Of that brief shadow how the barley’s beard
Tilts at the passing gloom, and wild rose dips
Among the white-tops in the ditches reared;
And hedgerow’s flowery breast of lacework stirs
Faintly in that full wind that rocks the outstanding firs.
Truly Boileau was right in his affirmation—a faultless sonnet is in itself worth a long poem; and Asselineau—fine sonnets, like all beautiful things in this world, are without price. No less beautiful is Turner’s companion sonnet, A Summer Twilight—an intaglio cut in green jade—where the bat’s flitting shadow, instead of the swallow’s flashing wing, imparts life and motion to the scene.