AIRSHIP OVER SUBURB
A smooth blue sky with puffed motionless clouds.
Standing over the plain of red roofs and bushy trees
The bright coloured shell of the large enamelled sky.
Out of the distance pointing, a cut dark shape
That moves this way at leisure, then hesitates and turns:
And its darkness suddenly dies as it turns and shows
A gleaming silver, white against even the whitest cloud.
Across the blue and the low small clouds it moves
Level, with a floating cloud-like motion of its own,
Peaceful, sunny and slow, a thing of summer itself,
Above the basking earth, travelling the clouds and the sky.
THE INVOCATION OF LUCRETIUS
BOOK I
Mother of Rome, delight of gods and men,
Beloved Venus, who under the fleeting stars
Fillest the freighted sea and earth's ripe fields,
O since through thee alone all forms of life
Are born, and climb into the sun's sweet light,
Goddess, before whose lovely advancing feet
The winds and towering clouds scatter and flee,
And the labouring earth discloses odorous flowers,
And the sea falls into a shining calm,
And the assuaged heavens mellow with light.
For when the spring-like face of day awakes,
And the West Wind, unloosed, flies procreant forth,
Then first the coursing birds, smitten at heart,
Betray, Lady, thy entrance and thy power,
And then the beasts caper in happy pastures
And swim swift floods; so all created things,
Captive to thee, drawn by their own desire,
Stray through the world where'er thy presence leads.
Through all the seas and hills and swelling streams,
Wing-fluttering woods and green, luxuriant plains,
Thou harryest them with lust, that none shall fail
To carry their eternal races on.