Out in the garden your head is already low. (Can you smell the rose? Ah, no.) But your limbs can draw Life from the earth through the touch of your padded paw. Now, sending a little look to us behind, Who follow slowly the track of your lovely play, You carry our bodies forward away from mind Into the light and fun of your useless day. * * * * * Thus, for your walk, we took ourselves, and went Out by the hedge and the tree to the open ground. You ran, in delightful strata of wafted scent, Over the hill without seeing the view; Beauty is smell upon primitive smell to you: To you, as to us, it is distant and rarely found. Home ... and further joy will be surely there: Supper waiting full of the taste of bone. You throw up your nose again, and sniff, and stare For the rapture known Of the quick wild gorge of food and the still lie-down While your people talk above you in the light Of candles, and your dreams will merge and drown Into the bed-delicious hours of night. THE NIGHTINGALE NEAR THE HOUSE Here is the soundless cypress on the lawn: It listens, listens. Taller trees beyond Listen. The moon at the unruffled pond Stares. And you sing, you sing. That star-enchanted song falls through the air From lawn to lawn down terraces of sound, Darts in white arrows on the shadowed ground; And all the night you sing. My dreams are flowers to which you are a bee As all night long I listen, and my brain Receives your song, then loses it again In moonlight on the lawn. Now is your voice a marble high and white, Then like a mist on fields of paradise, Now is a raging fire, then is like ice, Then breaks, and it is dawn. MAN CARRYING BALE The tough hand closes gently on the load; Out of the mind, a voice Calls 'Lift!' and the arms, remembering well their work, Lengthen and pause for help. Then a slow ripple flows from head to foot While all the muscles call to one another: 'Lift! 'and the bulging bale Floats like a butterfly in June. So moved the earliest carrier of bales, And the same watchful sun Glowed through his body feeding it with light. So will the last one move, And halt, and dip his head, and lay his load Down, and the muscles will relax and tremble. Earth, you designed your man Beautiful both in labour and repose. THOMAS MOULT FOR BESSIE, SEATED BY ME IN THE GARDEN