Dane heard and saw,
And was a little troubled that clear heads
Should cloud and squander thus, a little scornful.
Still if it gave them pleasure, and it but meant
Mind with mind idling together so,
Winter could come and go for all he cared,
He wouldn't grudge ... and then the doubt began,
A thought that somewhere under all this play
And nimbleness was crouching the true thing,
Lust, plain lust. There was between man and woman,
So Dane had learnt, two several conditions,
A compact to keep smooth the day's affairs,
That, and plain lust. This mind play was a sham....
Winter and Zell were lusting, that was all...
Then let them... damn it, let the matter be...
Time would show all, and there were crops and hounds.
....
They stood together by the dusky wall.
And long their lips met, in a hushed world fading,
A night of beauty fading in their own.
And then "I made a rhyme for you to-day,
When the last sheaves were binding I made it,
thus—"
I have no strange or subtle thought,
And the old things are best,
In curious tongues I am untaught,
Yet I know rest.
I know the sifting oakleaves still
Upon a twilit sky,
I hear the fernowl on the hill
Go wheeling by.
I know my flocks and how they keep
Their tunes of field and fold,
My scholarship can sow and reap,
From green to gold.
The circled stars from down to sea
I reckon as my gains,
The swallows are as dear to me
As loaded wains.
Yet these were ghosts and fugitive,
Until upon your step they came
By revelation's lips to live
In your dear name.
I saw you walking as dusk fell,
And leaves and wains and heaven and birds
Were miracles my blood may tell,
And not my words.
"And yet I would not lose the tidings come
On so dear words, though the blood knows it all,
As the song says." She spoke; and from the valley
Slowly towards the mill, by ghostly flocks
That stole about the meadows of the moonrise,
They walked, and made this argument of love.