BALLADE
MADE IN THE HOT WEATHER
To C. M.
Fountains that frisk and sprinkle
The moss they overspill;
Pools that the breezes crinkle;
The wheel beside the mill,
With its wet, weedy frill;
Wind-shadows in the wheat;
A water-cart in the street;
The fringe of foam that girds
An islet’s ferneries;
A green sky’s minor thirds—
To live, I think of these!
Of ice and glass the tinkle,
Pellucid, silver-shrill;
Peaches without a wrinkle;
Cherries and snow at will,
From china bowls that fill
The senses with a sweet
Incuriousness of heat;
A melon’s dripping sherds;
Cream-clotted strawberries;
Dusk dairies set with curds—
To live, I think of these!
Vale-lily and periwinkle;
Wet stone-crop on the sill;
The look of leaves a-twinkle
With windlets clear and still;
The feel of a forest rill
That wimples fresh and fleet
About one’s naked feet;
The muzzles of drinking herds;
Lush flags and bulrushes;
The chirp of rain-bound birds—
To live, I think of these!
Envoy
Dark aisles, new packs of cards,
Mermaidens’ tails, cool swards,
Dawn dews and starlit seas,
White marbles, whiter words—
To live, I think of these!
BALLADE OF TRUISMS
Gold or silver, every day,
Dies to gray.
There are knots in every skein.
Hours of work and hours of play
Fade away
Into one immense Inane.
Shadow and substance, chaff and grain,
Are as vain
As the foam or as the spray.
Life goes crooning, faint and fain,
One refrain:
‘If it could be always May!’
Though the earth be green and gay,
Though, they say,
Man the cup of heaven may drain;
Though, his little world to sway,
He display
Hoard on hoard of pith and brain:
Autumn brings a mist and rain
That constrain
Him and his to know decay,
Where undimmed the lights that wane
Would remain,
If it could be always May.