Page:Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1900.djvu/960

 Cool was the woodside; cool as her white dairy Keeping sweet the cream-pan; and there the boys from school, Cricketing below, rush'd brown and red with sunshine; O the dark translucence of the deep-eyed cool! Spying from the farm, herself she fetch'd a pitcher Full of milk, and tilted for each in turn the beak. Then a little fellow, mouth up and on tiptoe, Said, 'I will kiss you': she laugh'd and lean'd her cheek.

Doves of the fir-wood walling high our red roof Through the long noon coo, crooning through the coo. Loose droop the leaves, and down the sleepy roadway Sometimes pipes a chaffinch; loose droops the blue. Cows flap a slow tail knee-deep in the river, Breathless, given up to sun and gnat and fly. Nowhere is she seen; and if I see her nowhere, Lightning may come, straight rains and tiger sky.

O the golden sheaf, the rustling treasure-armful! O the nutbrown tresses nodding interlaced! O the treasure-tresses one another over Nodding! O the girdle slack about the waist! Slain are the poppies that shot their random scarlet Quick amid the wheat-ears: wound about the waist, Gathered, see these brides of Earth one blush of ripeness! O the nutbrown tresses nodding interlaced!

Large and smoky red the sun's cold disk drops, Clipped by naked hills, on violet shaded snow: Eastward large and still lights up a bower of moonrise, Whence at her leisure steps the moon aglow.