Bleating of sheep, the bark of a dog and, dun-yellow in the snow a long flock straggles. Crying of lambs, twitching noses of snowflecked ewes, the proud curved horns of a regal broadgirthed ram, yellow backs steaming; then, tails and tracks in the snow, and the responsible lope of the dog who stops with a paw lifted to look back at the baked apple face of the shepherd. _Cercedilla_ XXIII JULIET You were beside me on the stony path down from the mountain. And I was the rain that lashed such flame into your cheeks and the sensuous rolling hills where the mists clung like garments. I was the sadness that came out of the languid rain and the soft dove-tinted hills and choked you with the harsh embrace of a lover so that you almost sobbed. _Siete Picos_ XXIV When they sang as they marched in step on the long path that wound to the valley I followed lonely in silence. When they sat and laughed by the hearth where our damp clothes steamed in the flare of the noisy prancing flames I sat still in the shadow for their language was strange to me. But when as they slept I sat and watched by the door of the cabin I was not lonely for they lay with quiet faces stroked by the friendly tongues of the silent firelight and outside the white stars swarmed like gnats about a lamp in autumn an intelligible song. _Cercedilla_ XXV I lie among green rocks on the thyme-scented mountain. The thistledown clouds and the sky grey-white and grey-violet are mirrored in your dark eyes as in the changing pools of the mountain. I have made for your head a wreath of livid crocuses. How strange they are the wan lilac crocuses against your dark smooth skin in the intense black of your wind-towseled hair. Sleet from the high snowfields snaps a lash down the mountain bruising the withered petals of the last crocuses. I am alone in the swirling mist beside the frozen pools of the mountain. _La Maliciosa_ XXVI Infinities away already are your very slender body and the tremendous dark of your eyes where once beyond the laughingness of childhood, came a breath of jessamine prophetic of summer, a sudden flutter of yellow butterflies above dark pools. Shall I take down my books and weave from that glance a romance and build tinsel thrones for you out of old poets' fancies? Shall I fashion a temple about you where to burn out my life like frankincense till you tower dark behind the sultry veil huge as Isis?