Our fervid heart has filled that Book in chief; Our fitful heart a wild reflection views; Our craving heart of passion suckling grief Disowns the author’s work it must peruse; Inconscient in its leap to wreak the deed, A round of harvests red from crimson seed, It marks the current Hours show leaf by leaf, And rails at Destiny; nor traces clues; Though sometimes it may think what novel light Will strike their faces when the mind shall write. II Succourful daughters of men are the rosed and starred Revolving Twelves in their fluent germinal rings, Despite the burden to chasten, abase, depose. Fallen on France, as the sweep of scythe over sward, They breathed in her ear their voice of the crystal springs, That run from a twilight rise, from a twilight close, Through alternate beams and glooms, rejoicingly young. Only to Earth’s best loved, at the breathless turns Where Life in fold of the Shadow reclines unstrung, And a ghostly lamp of their moment’s union burns, Will such pure notes from the fountain-head be sung. Voice of Earth’s very soul to the soul she would see renewed: A song that sought no tears, that laid not a touch on the breast Sobbing aswoon and, like last foxgloves’ bells upon ferns In sandy alleys of woodland silence, shedding to bare. Daughters of Earth and men, they piped of her natural brood; Her patient helpful four-feet; wings on the flit or in nest; Paws at our old-world task to scoop a defensive lair; Snouts at hunt through the scented grasses; enhavened scuts Flashing escape under show of a laugh nigh the mossed burrow-mouth. Sack-like droop bronze pears on the nailed branch-frontage of huts, To greet those wedded toilers from acres where sweat is a shower. Snake, cicada, lizard, on lavender slopes up South, Pant for joy of a sunlight driving the fielders to bower. Sharpened in silver by one chance breeze is the olive’s grey; A royal-mantle floats, a red fritillary hies; The bee, for whom no flower of garden or wild has nay, Noises, heard if but named, so hot is the trade he plies. Processions beneath green arches of herbage, the long colonnades; Laboured mounds that a foot or a wanton stick may subvert; Homely are they for a lowly look on bedewed grass-blades, On citied fir-droppings, on twisted wreaths of the worm in dirt. Does nought so loosen our sight from the despot heart, to receive Balm of a sound Earth’s primary heart at its active beat: The motive, yet servant, of energy; simple as morn and eve; Treasureless, fetterless; free of the bonds of a great conceit: Unwounded even by cruel blows on a body that writhes; Nor whimpering under misfortune; elusive of obstacles; prompt To quit any threatened familiar domain seen doomed by the scythes; Its day’s hard business done, the score to the good accompt.