The Beautiful and the Desolate

Marvelling how this sun-kissed landscape shaped the sweep, In cornfields awash with yellow, seas of rippling gold, As the river cut a mud-bank path with current deep, And whispered sweet and long of things untold, Beneath the apple boughs we welcomed sleep. And when the sun at last sank to the rolling hill With dreamy eyes we spied the fall, the slow descent, The night hawk cried a warning to potential kill, The fields alive with mouse eyes came and went When dusk laid down a slyly creeping chill. I told her then of all my shallow heart desired, And face upturned she drank of all I said, so entranced, In truth, not in my life before, had I felt so inspired, The glittering of fireflies within her eyes had danced, And for an instant all the death within me had expired. Towards the lamp-lit moth trap of the lonely tavern gate When walking on the gravel, the leaf-roofed lane, Even though the greatest love stood fiercely proximate, The emptiness returned inside, but could not rule again, For the beautiful walked hand-in-hand with I the desolate,