The grass is full of forget-me-nots and poppies: Through the air darts many a fly. The ant toils up its grass-blade, The careless hours go by. The grass-blades bow to the feet of the lazy hours: They walk out of the wood, showering shadows on flowers. Their robes flutter vaguely far off there in the clearing: I see them sometimes from the corner of my eye. XVII The wind that drives the fine dry sand Across the strand: The sad wind spinning arabesques With a wrinkled hand. Labyrinths of shifting sand, The dancing dunes! I will arise and run with the sand, And gather it greedily in my hand: I will wriggle like a long yellow snake over the beaches. I will lie curled up, sleeping, And the wind shall chase me Far inland. My breath is the music of the mad wind; Shrill piping, stamping of drunken feet, The fluttering, tattered broidery flung Over the dunes' steep escarpments. The fine dry sand that whistles Down the long low beaches. XVIII Blue, brown, blue: sky, sand, sea: I swell to your immensity. I will run over the endless beach, I will shout to the breaking spray, I will touch the sky with my fingers. My happiness is like this sand: I let it run out of my hand. XIX The clouds pass Over the polished mirror of the sky: The clouds pass, puffs of grey, There is no star. The clouds pass slowly: Suddenly a disengaged star flashes. The night is cold and the clouds Roll slowly over the sky. XX I dance: I exist in motion: A wind-shaken flower spilling my drops in the sunlight. I feel the muscles bending, relaxing beneath me; I direct the rippling sweep of the lines of my body; Its impact crashes through the thin walls of the atmosphere, I dance. About me whirls The sombre hall, the gaudy stage, the harsh glare of the footlights, And in the brains of thousands watching Little flames leap quivering to the music of my effort. I have danced: I have expressed my soul In unbroken rhythm, Sorrow, and flame. I am tired: I would be extinguished beneath your beating hands. XXI Not noisily, but solemnly and pale, In a meditative ecstasy you entered life: As performing some strange rite, to which you alone held the clue. Child, life did not give rude strength to you; from the beginning, you would seem to have thrown away, As something cold and cumbersome, that armour men use against death. You would perhaps look on him face to face, and so learn the secret Whether that face wears oftenest a smile or no? Strange, old, and silent being, there is something Infinitely vast in your intense tininess: I think you could point out, with a smile, some curious star Far off in the heavens, which no man has seen before. XXII