The larks have devices
For sunny delight,
And the sheep in their fleeces
Are woolly and white;
But these things are the scorn
Of the bird in the corn.
And morning goes by,
And still he is there,
Till a rose in the sky
Calls him back to his lair
In the boughs where the gloom
Is a part of his plume.
But the boy in the lane
With his gun, by and by,
To the heart of the grain
Will narrowly spy,
And the twilight will come,
And no crow will fly home.
VENUS IN ARDEN
Now Love, her mantle thrown,
Goes naked by,
Threading the woods alone,
Her royal eye
Happy because the primroses again
Break on the winter continence of men.
I saw her pass to-day
In Warwickshire,
With the old imperial way,
The old desire,
Fresh as among those other flowers they went
More beautiful for Adon’s discontent.
Those other years she made
Her festival
When the blue eggs were laid
And lambs were tall,
By the Athenian rivers while the reeds
Made love melodious for the Ganymedes.
And now through Cantlow brakes,
By Wilmcote hill,
To Avon-side, she makes
Her garlands still,
And I who watch her flashing limbs am one
With youth whose days three thousand years are done.