To-morrow swimming in evening's vague, dim vapour Like a weeded city in shadow under the sea, Beneath an ocean of shimmering light you will be: Then a group of toadstools waiting the moon's white taper.
And when I awake in the morning, after rain, To find the new houses a cluster of lilies glittering In scarlet, alive with the birds' bright twittering, I'll say your bond of ugliness is vain.
Oh Earth, you spinning clod of earth, And then you lamp, you lemon-coloured beauty; Oh Earth, you rotten apple rolling downward, Then brilliant Earth, from the burr of night in beauty As a jewel-brown horse-chestnut newly issued:-- You are all these, and strange, it is my duty To take you all, sordid or radiant tissued.
Oh labourers, oh shuttles across the blue frame of morning, You feet of the rainbow balancing the sky! Oh you who flash your arms like rockets to heaven, Who in lassitude lean as yachts on the sea-wind lie! You who in crowds are rhododendrons in blossom, Who stand alone in pride like lighted lamps; Who grappling down with work or hate or passion, Take strange lithe form of a beast that sweats and ramps: You who are twisted in grief like crumpled beech-leaves, Who curl in sleep like kittens, who kiss as a swarm Of clustered, vibrating bees; who fall to earth At last like a bean-pod: what are you, oh multiform?
We have bit no forbidden apple, Eve and I, Yet the splashes of day and night Falling round us no longer dapple The same Eden with purple and white.
This is our own still valley Our Eden, our home, But day shows it vivid with feeling And the pallor of night does not tally With dark sleep that once covered its ceiling.
My little red heifer, to-night I looked in her eyes, --She will calve to-morrow: Last night when I went with the lantern, the sow was grabbing her litter With red, snarling jaws: and I heard the cries Of the new-born, and after that, the old owl, then the bats that flitter.
And I woke to the sound of the wood-pigeons, and lay and listened, Till I could borrow A few quick beats of a wood-pigeon's heart, and when I did rise The morning sun on the shaken iris glistened, And I saw that home, this valley, was wider than Paradise.
I learned it all from my Eve This warm, dumb wisdom. She's a finer instructress than years; She has taught my heart-strings to weave Through the web of all laughter and tears.