Always before your voice my soul half-beautiful and wholly droll is as some smooth and awkward foal, whereof young moons begin the newness of his skin, so of my stupid sincere youth the exquisite failure uncouth discovers a trembling and smooth Unstrength,against the strong silences of your song; or as a single lamb whose sheen of full unsheared fleece is mean beside its lovelier friends,between your thoughts more white than wool My thought is sorrowful: but my heart smote in trembling thirds of anguish quivers to your words, As to a flight of thirty birds shakes with a thickening fright the sudden fooled light. it is the autumn of a year: When through the thin air stooped with fear, across the harvest whitely peer empty of surprise death's faultless eyes (whose hand my folded soul shall know while on faint hills do frailly go The peaceful terrors of the snow, and before your dead face which sleeps,a dream shall pass) and these my days their sounds and flowers Fall in a pride of petaled hours, like flowers at the feet of mowers whose bodies strong with love through meadows hugely move. yet what am i that such and such mysteries very simply touch me,whose heart-wholeness overmuch Expects of your hair pale, a terror musical? while in an earthless hour my fond soul seriously yearns beyond this fern of sunset frond on frond opening in a rare Slowness of gloried air... The flute of morning stilled in noon— noon the implacable bassoon— now Twilight seeks the thrill of moon, washed with a wild and thin despair of violin
This poem is in the public domain.