Page:The Complete Poems of Francis Ledwidge, 1919.djvu/145

Rh For one blue minute then there was no sound

Save water-noise, slow round a rushy bend,

And bird-delight, and ripples on the ground

Of windy flowers that swelling would ascend

The coloured hill and break all beautiful

And, falling backwards, to the woods would send

The full tide of their love. What soft moons pull

Their moving fragrance? did I ask, and found

Sad Io in far Egypt met a friend.—

It was my body thought so, far away

In the grey future, not the wild bird tied

That is the wandering soul. Behind the day

We may behold thee, soft one, hunted wide

By the loud gadfly; but the truant soul

Knows thee before thou lay by night's dark side,

Wed to the dimness; long before its dole