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Best Famous Afield Poems

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Written by Thomas Gray | Create an image from this poem

Elegy Written In A Country Churchyard

 The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea,
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.
Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight, And all the air a solemn stillness holds, Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight, And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds; Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tower The moping owl does to the moon complain Of such as, wandering near her secret bower, Molest her ancient solitary reign.
Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade, Where heaves the turf in many a mould'ring heap, Each in his narrow cell for ever laid, The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.
The breezy call of incense-breathing morn, The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed, The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn, No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.
For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn, Or busy housewife ply her evening-care; No children run to lisp their sire's return, Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share.
Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield, Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke: How jocund did they drive their team afield! How bowed the woods beneath their sturdy stroke! Let not Ambition mock their useful toil, Their homely joys and destiny obscure; Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile The short and simple annals of the poor.
The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow'r, And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave, Awaits alike th' inevitable hour.
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.
Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault, If Memory o'er their tomb no trophies raise, Where through the long-drawn aisle, and fretted vault, The pealing anthem swells the note of praise.
Can storied urn, or animated bust, Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath? Can Honour's voice provoke the silent dust, Or Flattery soothe the dull cold ear of Death? Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire; Hands, that the rod of empire might have swayed, Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre; But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page, Rich with the spoils of Time, did ne'er unroll; Chill Penury repressed their noble rage, And froze the genial current of the soul.
Full many a gem of purest ray serene The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear; Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air.
Some village-Hampden that with dauntless breast The little tyrant of his fields withstood, Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest, Some Cromwell, guiltless of his country's blood.
Th' applause of list'ning senates to command, The threats of pain and ruin to despise, To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land, And read their history in a nation's eyes, Their lot forbad: nor circumscribed alone Their growing virtues, but their crimes confined; Forbad to wade through slaughter to a throne, And shut the Gates of Mercy on mankind, The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide, To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame, Or heap the shrine of Luxury and Pride With incense kindled at the Muse's flame.
Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife Their sober wishes never learned to stray; Along the cool sequestered vale of life They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.
Yet ev'n these bones from insult to protect Some frail memorial still erected nigh, With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture decked, Implores the passing tribute of a sigh.
Their name, their years, spelt by th' unlettered Muse, The place of fame and elegy supply: And many a holy text around she strews, That teach the rustic moralist to die.
For who, to dumb Forgetfulness a prey, This pleasing anxious being e'er resigned, Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day, Nor cast one longing ling'ring look behind? On some fond breast the parting soul relies, Some pious drops the closing eye requires; Ev'n from the tomb the voice of Nature cries, Ev'n in our ashes live their wonted fires.
For thee, who, mindful of th' unhonoured dead, Dost in these lines their artless tale relate; If chance, by lonely Contemplation led, Some kindred spirit shall enquire thy fate,— Haply some hoary-headed swain may say "Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn Brushing with hasty steps the dews away To meet the sun upon the upland lawn; "There at the foot of yonder nodding beech, That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high, His listless length at noon-tide would he stretch, And pore upon the brook that babbles by.
"Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn, Mutt'ring his wayward fancies would he rove; Now drooping, woeful-wan, like one forlorn, Or crazed with care, or crossed in hopeless love.
"One morn I missed him from the customed hill, Along the heath, and near his fav'rite tree; Another came; nor yet beside the rill, Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he: "The next, with dirges due in sad array Slow through the church-way path we saw him borne,— Approach and read, for thou can'st read, the lay Graved on the stone beneath yon aged thorn.
" THE EPITAPH Here rests his head upon the lap of earth A Youth, to Fortune and to Fame unknown: Fair Science frowned not on his humble birth, And Melancholy marked him for her own.
Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere, Heaven did a recompense as largely send: He gave to Misery (all he had) a tear, He gained from Heaven ('twas all he wished) a friend.
No farther seek his merits to disclose, Or draw his frailties from their dread abode, (There they alike in trembling hope repose,) The bosom of his Father and his God.


Written by Alan Seeger | Create an image from this poem

Do You Remember Once . .

 Do you remember once, in Paris of glad faces, 
The night we wandered off under the third moon's rays 
And, leaving far behind bright streets and busy places, 
Stood where the Seine flowed down between its quiet quais? 


The city's voice was hushed; the placid, lustrous waters 
Mirrored the walls across where orange windows burned.
Out of the starry south provoking rumors brought us Far promise of the spring already northward turned.
And breast drew near to breast, and round its soft desire My arm uncertain stole and clung there unrepelled.
I thought that nevermore my heart would hover nigher To the last flower of bliss that Nature's garden held.
There, in your beauty's sweet abandonment to pleasure, The mute, half-open lips and tender, wondering eyes, I saw embodied first smile back on me the treasure Long sought across the seas and back of summer skies.
Dear face, when courted Death shall claim my limbs and find them Laid in some desert place, alone or where the tides Of war's tumultuous waves on the wet sands behind them Leave rifts of gasping life when their red flood subsides, Out of the past's remote delirious abysses Shine forth once more as then you shone, -- beloved head, Laid back in ecstasy between our blinding kisses, Transfigured with the bliss of being so coveted.
And my sick arms will part, and though hot fever sear it, My mouth will curve again with the old, tender flame.
And darkness will come down, still finding in my spirit The dream of your brief love, and on my lips your name.
II You loved me on that moonlit night long since.
You were my queen and I the charming prince Elected from a world of mortal men.
You loved me once.
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What pity was it, then, You loved not Love.
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Deep in the emerald west, Like a returning caravel caressed By breezes that load all the ambient airs With clinging fragrance of the bales it bears From harbors where the caravans come down, I see over the roof-tops of the town The new moon back again, but shall not see The joy that once it had in store for me, Nor know again the voice upon the stair, The little studio in the candle-glare, And all that makes in word and touch and glance The bliss of the first nights of a romance When will to love and be beloved casts out The want to question or the will to doubt.
You loved me once.
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Under the western seas The pale moon settles and the Pleiades.
The firelight sinks; outside the night-winds moan -- The hour advances, and I sleep alone.
III Farewell, dear heart, enough of vain despairing! If I have erred I plead but one excuse -- The jewel were a lesser joy in wearing That cost a lesser agony to lose.
I had not bid for beautifuller hours Had I not found the door so near unsealed, Nor hoped, had you not filled my arms with flowers, For that one flower that bloomed too far afield.
If I have wept, it was because, forsaken, I felt perhaps more poignantly than some The blank eternity from which we waken And all the blank eternity to come.
And I betrayed how sweet a thing and tender (In the regret with which my lip was curled) Seemed in its tragic, momentary splendor My transit through the beauty of the world.
Written by Robert Frost | Create an image from this poem

Waiting

 Afield at dusk

What things for dream there are when specter-like,
Moving amond tall haycocks lightly piled,
I enter alone upon the stubbled filed,
From which the laborers' voices late have died,
And in the antiphony of afterglow
And rising full moon, sit me down
Upon the full moon's side of the first haycock
And lose myself amid so many alike.
I dream upon the opposing lights of the hour, Preventing shadow until the moon prevail; I dream upon the nighthawks peopling heaven, Or plunging headlong with fierce twang afar; And on the bat's mute antics, who would seem Dimly to have made out my secret place, Only to lose it when he pirouettes, On the last swallow's sweep; and on the rasp In the abyss of odor and rustle at my back, That, silenced by my advent, finds once more, After an interval, his instrument, And tries once--twice--and thrice if I be there; And on the worn book of old-golden song I brought not here to read, it seems, but hold And freshen in this air of withering sweetness; But on the memor of one absent, most, For whom these lines when they shall greet her eye.
Written by Robert William Service | Create an image from this poem

The Ballad Of The Black Fox Skin

 I

There was Claw-fingered Kitty and Windy Ike living the life of shame,
When unto them in the Long, Long Night came the man-who-had-no-name;
Bearing his prize of a black fox pelt, out of the Wild he came.
His cheeks were blanched as the flume-head foam when the brown spring freshets flow; Deep in their dark, sin-calcined pits were his sombre eyes aglow; They knew him far for the fitful man who spat forth blood on the snow.
"Did ever you see such a skin?" quoth he; "there's nought in the world so fine-- Such fullness of fur as black as the night, such lustre, such size, such shine; It's life to a one-lunged man like me; it's London, it's women, it's wine.
"The Moose-hides called it the devil-fox, and swore that no man could kill; That he who hunted it, soon or late, must surely suffer some ill; But I laughed at them and their old squaw-tales.
Ha! Ha! I'm laughing still.
"For look ye, the skin--it's as smooth as sin, and black as the core of the Pit.
By gun or by trap, whatever the hap, I swore I would capture it; By star and by star afield and afar, I hunted and would not quit.
"For the devil-fox, it was swift and sly, and it seemed to fleer at me; I would wake in fright by the camp-fire light, hearing its evil glee; Into my dream its eyes would gleam, and its shadow would I see.
"It sniffed and ran from the ptarmigan I had poisoned to excess; Unharmed it sped from my wrathful lead ('twas as if I shot by guess); Yet it came by night in the stark moonlight to mock at my weariness.
"I tracked it up where the mountains hunch like the vertebrae of the world; I tracked it down to the death-still pits where the avalanche is hurled; From the glooms to the sacerdotal snows, where the carded clouds are curled.
"From the vastitudes where the world protrudes through clouds like seas up-shoaled, I held its track till it led me back to the land I had left of old-- The land I had looted many moons.
I was weary and sick and cold.
"I was sick, soul-sick, of the futile chase, and there and then I swore The foul fiend fox might scathless go, for I would hunt no more; Then I rubbed mine eyes in a vast surprise--it stood by my cabin door.
"A rifle raised in the wraith-like gloom, and a vengeful shot that sped; A howl that would thrill a cream-faced corpse-- and the demon fox lay dead.
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Yet there was never a sign of wound, and never a drop he bled.
"So that was the end of the great black fox, and here is the prize I've won; And now for a drink to cheer me up--I've mushed since the early sun; We'll drink a toast to the sorry ghost of the fox whose race is run.
" II Now Claw-fingered Kitty and Windy Ike, bad as the worst were they; In their road-house down by the river-trail they waited and watched for prey; With wine and song they joyed night long, and they slept like swine by day.
For things were done in the Midnight Sun that no tongue will ever tell; And men there be who walk earth-free, but whose names are writ in hell-- Are writ in flames with the guilty names of Fournier and Labelle.
Put not your trust in a poke of dust would ye sleep the sleep of sin; For there be those who would rob your clothes ere yet the dawn comes in; And a prize likewise in a woman's eyes is a peerless black fox skin.
Put your faith in the mountain cat if you lie within his lair; Trust the fangs of the mother-wolf, and the claws of the lead-ripped bear; But oh, of the wiles and the gold-tooth smiles of a dance-hall wench beware! Wherefore it was beyond all laws that lusts of man restrain, A man drank deep and sank to sleep never to wake again; And the Yukon swallowed through a hole the cold corpse of the slain.
III The black fox skin a shadow cast from the roof nigh to the floor; And sleek it seemed and soft it gleamed, and the woman stroked it o'er; And the man stood by with a brooding eye, and gnashed his teeth and swore.
When thieves and thugs fall out and fight there's fell arrears to pay; And soon or late sin meets its fate, and so it fell one day That Claw-fingered Kitty and Windy Ike fanged up like dogs at bay.
"The skin is mine, all mine," she cried; "I did the deed alone.
" "It's share and share with a guilt-yoked pair", he hissed in a pregnant tone; And so they snarled like malamutes over a mildewed bone.
And so they fought, by fear untaught, till haply it befell One dawn of day she slipped away to Dawson town to sell The fruit of sin, this black fox skin that had made their lives a hell.
She slipped away as still he lay, she clutched the wondrous fur; Her pulses beat, her foot was fleet, her fear was as a spur; She laughed with glee, she did not see him rise and follow her.
The bluffs uprear and grimly peer far over Dawson town; They see its lights a blaze o' nights and harshly they look down; They mock the plan and plot of man with grim, ironic frown.
The trail was steep; 'twas at the time when swiftly sinks the snow; All honey-combed, the river ice was rotting down below; The river chafed beneath its rind with many a mighty throe.
And up the swift and oozy drift a woman climbed in fear, Clutching to her a black fox fur as if she held it dear; And hard she pressed it to her breast--then Windy Ike drew near.
She made no moan--her heart was stone--she read his smiling face, And like a dream flashed all her life's dark horror and disgrace; A moment only--with a snarl he hurled her into space.
She rolled for nigh an hundred feet; she bounded like a ball; From crag to crag she carromed down through snow and timber fall; .
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A hole gaped in the river ice; the spray flashed--that was all.
A bird sang for the joy of spring, so piercing sweet and frail; And blinding bright the land was dight in gay and glittering mail; And with a wondrous black fox skin a man slid down the trail.
IV A wedge-faced man there was who ran along the river bank, Who stumbled through each drift and slough, and ever slipped and sank, And ever cursed his Maker's name, and ever "hooch" he drank.
He travelled like a hunted thing, hard harried, sore distrest; The old grandmother moon crept out from her cloud-quilted nest; The aged mountains mocked at him in their primeval rest.
Grim shadows diapered the snow; the air was strangely mild; The valley's girth was dumb with mirth, the laughter of the wild; The still, sardonic laughter of an ogre o'er a child.
The river writhed beneath the ice; it groaned like one in pain, And yawning chasms opened wide, and closed and yawned again; And sheets of silver heaved on high until they split in twain.
From out the road-house by the trail they saw a man afar Make for the narrow river-reach where the swift cross-currents are; Where, frail and worn, the ice is torn and the angry waters jar.
But they did not see him crash and sink into the icy flow; They did not see him clinging there, gripped by the undertow, Clawing with bleeding finger-nails at the jagged ice and snow.
They found a note beside the hole where he had stumbled in: "Here met his fate by evil luck a man who lived in sin, And to the one who loves me least I leave this black fox skin.
" And strange it is; for, though they searched the river all around, No trace or sign of black fox skin was ever after found; Though one man said he saw the tread of HOOFS deep in the ground.
Written by Rudyard Kipling | Create an image from this poem

Christmas in India

 Dim dawn behind the tamerisks -- the sky is saffron-yellow --
 As the women in the village grind the corn,
And the parrots seek the riverside, each calling to his fellow
 That the Day, the staring Easter Day is born.
Oh the white dust on the highway! Oh the stenches in the byway! Oh the clammy fog that hovers And at Home they're making merry 'neath the white and scarlet berry -- What part have India's exiles in their mirth? Full day begind the tamarisks -- the sky is blue and staring -- As the cattle crawl afield beneath the yoke, And they bear One o'er the field-path, who is past all hope or caring, To the ghat below the curling wreaths of smoke.
Call on Rama, going slowly, as ye bear a brother lowly -- Call on Rama -- he may hear, perhaps, your voice! With our hymn-books and our psalters we appeal to other altars, And to-day we bid "good Christian men rejoice!" High noon behind the tamarisks -- the sun is hot above us -- As at Home the Christmas Day is breaking wan.
They will drink our healths at dinner -- those who tell us how they love us, And forget us till another year be gone! Oh the toil that knows no breaking! Oh the Heimweh, ceaseless, aching! Oh the black dividing Sea and alien Plain! Youth was cheap -- wherefore we sold it.
Gold was good -- we hoped to hold it, And to-day we know the fulness of our gain.
Grey dusk behind the tamarisks -- the parrots fly together -- As the sun is sinking slowly over Home; And his last ray seems to mock us shackled in a lifelong tether.
That drags us back how'er so far we roam.
Hard her service, poor her payment -- she is ancient, tattered raiment -- India, she the grim Stepmother of our kind.
If a year of life be lent her, if her temple's shrine we enter, The door is hut -- we may not look behind.
Black night behind the tamarisks -- the owls begin their chorus -- As the conches from the temple scream and bray.
With the fruitless years behind us, and the hopeless years before us, Let us honor, O my brother, Christmas Day! Call a truce, then, to our labors -- let us feast with friends and neighbors, And be merry as the custom of our caste; For if "faint and forced the laughter," and if sadness follow after, We are richer by one mocking Christmas past.


Written by Bliss Carman | Create an image from this poem

The Vagabonds

 We are the vagabonds of time, 
And rove the yellow autumn days, 
When all the roads are gray with rime 
And all the valleys blue with haze.
We came unlooked for as the wind Trooping across the April hills, When the brown waking earth had dreams Of summer in the Wander Kills.
How far afield we joyed to fare, With June in every blade and tree! Now with the sea-wind in our hair We turn our faces to the sea.
We go unheeded as the stream That wanders by the hill-wood side, Till the great marshes take his hand And lead him to the roving tide.
The roving tide, the sleeping hills, These are the borders of that zone Where they may fare as fancy wills Whom wisdom smiles and calls her own.
It is a country of the sun, Full of forgotten yesterdays, When Time takes Summer in his care, And fills the distance of her gaze.
It stretches from the open sea To the blue mountains and beyond; The world is Vagabondia To him who is a vagabond.
In the beginning God made man Out of the wandering dust, men say; And in the end his life shall be A wandering wind and blown away.
We are the vagabonds of time, Willing to let the world go by, With joy supreme, with heart sublime, And valor in the kindling eye.
We have forgotten where we slept, And guess not where we sleep to-night, Whether among the lonely hills In the pale streamers' ghostly light We shall lie down and hear the frost Walk in the dead leaves restlessly, Or somewhere on the iron coast Learn the oblivion of the sea.
It matters not.
And yet I dream Of dreams fulfilled and rest somewhere Before this restless heart is stilled And all its fancies blown to air.
Had I my will! .
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The sun burns down And something plucks my garment's hem: The robins in their faded brown Would lure me to the south with them.
'Tis time for vagabonds to make The nearest inn.
Far on I hear The voices of the Northern hills Gather the vagrants of the year.
Brave heart, my soul! Let longings be! We have another day to wend.
For dark or waylay what care we Who have the lords of time to friend? And if we tarry or make haste, The wayside sleep can hold no fear.
Shall fate unpoise, or whim perturb, The calm-begirt in dawn austere? There is a tavern, I have heard, Not far, and frugal, kept by One Who knows the children of the Word, And welcomes each when day is done.
Some say the house is lonely set In Northern night, and snowdrifts keep The silent door; the hearth is cold, And all my fellows gone to sleep.
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Had I my will! I hear the sea Thunder a welcome on the shore; I know where lies the hostelry And who should open me the door.
Written by Thomas Hardy | Create an image from this poem

Shelleys Skylark (The neighbourhood of Leghorn: March)

 Somewhere afield here something lies 
In Earth's oblivious eyeless trust 
That moved a poet to prophecies - 
A pinch of unseen, unguarded dust 

The dust of the lark that Shelley heard, 
And made immortal through times to be; - 
Though it only lived like another bird, 
And knew not its immortality.
Lived its meek life; then, one day, fell - A little ball of feather and bone; And how it perished, when piped farewell, And where it wastes, are alike unknown.
Maybe it rests in the loam I view, Maybe it throbs in a myrtle's green, Maybe it sleeps in the coming hue Of a grape on the slopes of yon inland scene.
Go find it, faeries, go and find That tiny pinch of priceless dust, And bring a casket silver-lined, And framed of gold that gems encrust; And we will lay it safe therein, And consecrate it to endless time; For it inspired a bard to win Ecstatic heights in thought and rhyme.
Written by A E Housman | Create an image from this poem

March

 The Sun at noon to higher air, 
Unharnessing the silver Pair 
That late before his chariot swam, 
Rides on the gold wool of the Ram.
So braver notes the storm-cock sings To start the rusted wheel of things, And brutes in field and brutes in pen Leap that the world goes round again.
The boys are up the woods with day To fetch the daffodils away, And home at noonday from the hills They bring no dearth of daffodils.
Afield for palms the girls repair, And sure enough the palms are there, And each will find by hedge or pond Her waving silver-tufted wand.
In farm and field through all the shire The eye beholds the heart's desire; Ah, let not only mine be vain, For lovers should be loved again.
Written by Edmund Blunden | Create an image from this poem

Perch-Fishing

On the far hill the cloud of thunder grew
And sunlight blurred below; but sultry blue
Burned yet on the valley water where it hoards
Behind the miller's elmen floodgate boards,
And there the wasps, that lodge them ill-concealed
In the vole's empty house, still drove afield
To plunder touchwood from old crippled trees
And build their young ones their hutched nurseries;
Still creaked the grasshoppers' rasping unison
Nor had the whisper through the tansies run
Nor weather-wisest bird gone home.
How then Should wry eels in the pebbled shallows ken Lightning coming? troubled up they stole To the deep-shadowed sullen water-hole, Among whose warty snags the quaint perch lair.
As cunning stole the boy to angle there, Muffling least tread, with no noise balancing through The hangdog alder-boughs his bright bamboo.
Down plumbed the shuttled ledger, and the quill On the quicksilver water lay dead still.
A sharp snatch, swirling to-fro of the line, He's lost, he's won, with splash and scuffling shine Past the low-lapping brandy-flowers drawn in, The ogling hunchback perch with needled fin.
And there beside him one as large as he, Following his hooked mate, careless who shall see Or what befall him, close and closer yet — The startled boy might take him in his net That folds the other.
Slow, while on the clay, The other flounces, slow he sinks away.
What agony usurps that watery brain For comradeship of twenty summers slain, For such delights below the flashing weir And up the sluice-cut, playing buccaneer Among the minnows; lolling in hot sun When bathing vagabonds had drest and done; Rootling in salty flannel-weed for meal And river shrimps, when hushed the trundling wheel; Snapping the dapping moth, and with new wonder Prowling through old drowned barges falling asunder.
And O a thousand things the whole year through They did together, never more to do.
Written by A E Housman | Create an image from this poem

The Merry Guide

 Once in the wind of morning
 I ranged the thymy wold;
The world-wide air was azure
 And all the brooks ran gold.
There through the dews beside me Behold a youth that trod, With feathered cap on forehead, And poised a golden rod.
With mien to match the morning And gay delightful guise And friendly brows and laughter He looked me in the eyes.
Oh whence, I asked, and whither? He smiled and would not say, And looked at me and beckoned And laughed and led the way.
And with kind looks and laughter And nought to say beside We two went on together, I and my happy guide.
Across the glittering pastures And empty upland still And solitude of shepherds High in the folded hill, By hanging woods and hamlets That gaze through orchards down On many a windmill turning And far-discovered town, With gay regards of promise And sure unslackened stride And smiles and nothing spoken Led on my merry guide.
By blowing realms of woodland With sunstruck vanes afield And cloud-led shadows sailing About the windy weald, By valley-guarded granges And silver waters wide, Content at heart I followed With my delightful guide.
And like the cloudy shadows Across the country blown We two fare on for ever, But not we two alone.
With the great gale we journey That breathes from gardens thinned, Borne in the drift of blossoms Whose petals throng the wind; Buoyed on the heaven-heard whisper Of dancing leaflets whirled >From all the woods that autumn Bereaves in all the world.
And midst the fluttering legion Of all that ever died I follow, and before us Goes the delightful guide, With lips that brim with laughter But never once respond, And feet that fly on feathers, And serpent-circled wand.

Book: Reflection on the Important Things