AN IMPRESSION RECEIVED FROM A SYMPHONY
There was a day, when I, if that was I,
Surrendered lay beneath a burning sky,
Where overhead the azure ached with heat,
And many red fierce poppies splashed the wheat;
Motion was dead, and silence was complete,
And stains of red fierce poppies splashed the wheat,
And as I lay upon a scent-warm bank,
I fell away, slipped back from earth, and sank,
I lost the place of sky and field and tree,
One covering face obscured the world for me,
And for an hour I knew eternity,
For one fixed face suspended Time for me.
O had those eyes in that extreme of bliss
Shed one more wise and culminating kiss,
My end had come, nor had I lived to quail,
Frightened and dumb as things must do that fail,
And in this last black devil-mocking gale,
Battered and dumb to fight the dark and fail.
FEN LANDSCAPE
Wind waves the reeds by the river,
Grey sky lids the leaden water.
Ducks fly low across the water,
Three flying: one quacks sadly.
Grey are the sky and the water,
Green the lost ribbons of reed-beds,
Small in the silence a black boat
Floats upon wide pale mirrors.