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 O joyous girls who rise at break of morn With sandal-soil your thresholds to adorn, Ye brides who streamward bear on jewelled feet Your gifts of silver lamps and new-blown wheat, I pray you dim your voices when you sing Your radiant salutations to the spring.

Hai! what have I to do with nesting birds, With lotus-honey, corn and ivory curds, With plantain blossom and pomegranate fruit, Or rose-wreathed lintels and rose-scented lute, With lighted shrines and fragrant altar-fires Where happy women breathe their hearts' desires?

For my sad life is doomed to be, alas, Ruined and sere like sorrow-trodden grass, My heart hath grown, plucked by the wind of grief, Akin to fallen flower and faded leaf, 41