Page:Poems (Edward Thomas, 1917).djvu/43

 I knew that laughed because he saw, from core

To rind, not one thing worth the laugh his soul

Had ready at waking: some eyes have begun

With laughing; some stand startled at the door.

Others, too, I have seen rest, question, roll,

Dance, shoot. And many I have loved watching. Some

I could not take my eyes from till they turned

And loving died. I had not found my goal.

But thinking of your eyes, dear, I become

Dumb: for they flamed, and it was me they burned.

MAY 23

never was a finer day,

And never will be while May is May,—

The third, and not the last of its kind;

But though fair and clear the two behind

Seemed pursued by tempests overpast;

And the morrow with fear that it could not last

Was spoiled. To-day ere the stones were warm

Five minutes of thunderstorm

Dashed it with rain, as if to secure,

By one tear, its beauty the luck to endure.

At mid-day then along the lane

Old Jack Noman appeared again,

Jaunty and old, crooked and tall,

And stopped and grinned at me over the wall,

With a cowslip bunch in his button-hole

And one in his cap. Who could say if his roll 37