Oh labourers, oh shuttles across the blue frame of morning, You feet of the rainbow balancing the sky! Oh you who flash your arms like rockets to heaven, Who in lassitude lean as yachts on the sea-wind lie! You who in crowds are rhododendrons in blossom, Who stand alone in pride like lighted lamps; Who grappling down with work or hate or passion, Take strange lithe form of a beast that sweats and ramps: You who are twisted in grief like crumpled beech-leaves, Who curl in sleep like kittens, who kiss as a swarm Of clustered, vibrating bees; who fall to earth At last like a bean-pod: what are you, oh multiform? RENASCENCE We have bit no forbidden apple, Eve and I, Yet the splashes of day and night Falling round us no longer dapple The same Eden with purple and white. This is our own still valley Our Eden, our home, But day shows it vivid with feeling And the pallor of night does not tally With dark sleep that once covered its ceiling. My little red heifer, to-night I looked in her eyes, --She will calve to-morrow: Last night when I went with the lantern, the sow was grabbing her litter With red, snarling jaws: and I heard the cries Of the new-born, and after that, the old owl, then the bats that flitter. And I woke to the sound of the wood-pigeons, and lay and listened, Till I could borrow A few quick beats of a wood-pigeon's heart, and when I did rise The morning sun on the shaken iris glistened, And I saw that home, this valley, was wider than Paradise. I learned it all from my Eve This warm, dumb wisdom. She's a finer instructress than years; She has taught my heart-strings to weave Through the web of all laughter and tears. And now I see the valley Fleshed all like me With feelings that change and quiver: And all things seem to tally With something in me, Something of which she's the giver. DOG-TIRED If she would come to me here, Now the sunken swaths Are glittering paths To the sun, and the swallows cut clear Into the low sun--if she came to me here! If she would come to me now, Before the last mown harebells are dead, While that vetch clump yet burns red; Before all the bats have dropped from the bough Into the cool of night--if she came to me now! The horses are untackled, the chattering machine Is still at last. If she would come, I would gather up the warm hay from The hill-brow, and lie in her lap till the green Sky ceased to quiver, and lost its tired sheen. I should like to drop On the hay, with my head on her knee And lie stone still, while she Breathed quiet above me--we could stop Till the stars came out to see. I should like to lie still As if I was dead--but feeling Her hand go stealing Over my face and my hair until This ache was shed. MICHAEL-ANGELO God shook thy roundness in His finger's cup, He sunk His hands in firmness down thy sides, And drew the circle of His grasp, O Man, Along thy limbs delighted, thine, His bride's.