Page:The Poems of Oscar Wilde.pdf/67

 Mark how the yellow iris wearily

Leans back its throat, as though it would be kissed

By its false chamberer, the dragon-fly,

Who, like a blue vein on a girl's white wrist,

Sleeps on that snowy primrose of the night,

Which 'gins to flush with crimson shame, and die beneath the light.

Come let us go, against the pallid shield

Of the wan sky the almond blossoms gleam,

The corncrake nested in the unmown field

Answers its mate, across the misty stream

On fitful wing the startled curlews fly,

And in his sedgy bed the lark, for joy that Day is nigh,

Scatters the pearlèd dew from off the grass,

In tremulous ecstasy to greet the sun,

Who soon in gilded panoply will pass

Forth from yon orange-curtained pavilion

Hung in the burning east, see, the red rim

O'ertops the expectant hills! it is the God! for love of him

Already the shrill lark is out of sight,

Flooding with waves of song this silent dell,— 53