[The Japanese Anemone]
All summer the breath of the roses around
Exhales with a delicate passionate sound;
And when from a trellis, in holiday places,
They croon and cajole, with their slumberous faces,
A lad in the lane must slacken his paces.
Fragrance of these is a voice from a bower:
But low by the wall is my odourless flower,
So pure, so controlled, not a fume is above her,
That poet or bee should delay there and hover;
For she is a silence, and therefore I love her.
And never a mortal by morn or midnight
Is called to her hid little house of delight;
And she keeps from the wind, on his pillages olden,
Upon a true stalk in rough weather upholden,
Her winter-white gourd with the hollow moon-golden.
While ardours of roses contend and increase,
Methinks she has found how noble is peace,
Like a spirit besought from the world to dissever,
Not absent to men, though resumed by the Giver,
And dead long ago, being lovely for ever.
[Orisons]
Orange and olive and glossed bay-tree,
And air of the evening out at sea,
And out at sea on the steep warm stone,
A little bare diver poising alone.
Flushed from the cool of Sicilian waves,
Flushed as the coral in clean sea-caves,
"I am!" he cries to his glorying heart,
And unto he knows not what: "Thou art!"
He leaps, he shines, he sinks and is gone:
He will climb to the golden ledge anon.
Perfecter rite can none employ,
When the god of the isle is good to a boy.