Bright windy sunshine and the shadow of cloud Quicken the heavy summer to new birth Of life and motion on the drowsing earth; The huge elms stir, till all the air is loud With their awakening from the muffled sleep Of long hot days. And on the wavering line That marks the alternate ebb of shade and shine, Under the trees, a little group is deep In laughing talk. The shadow as it flows Across them dims the lustre of a rose, Quenches the bright clear gold of hair, the green Of a girl's dress, and life seems faint. The light Swings back, and in the rose a fire is seen, Gold hair's aflame and green grows emerald bright. III. She leans, and there is laughter in the face She turns towards him; and it seems a door Suddenly opened on some desolate place With a burst of light and music. What before Was hidden shines in loveliness revealed. Now first he sees her beautiful, and knows That he must love her; and the doom is sealed Of all his happiness and all the woes That shall be born of pregnant years hereafter. The swift poise of a head, a flutter of laughter-- And love flows in on him, its vastness pent Within his narrow life: the pain it brings, Boundless; for love is infinite discontent With the poor lonely life of transient things. IV. Men see their god, an immanence divine, Smile through the curve of flesh or moulded clay, In bare ploughed lands that go sloping away To meet the sky in one clean exquisite line. Out of the short-seen dawns of ecstasy They draw new beauty, whence new thoughts are born And in their turn conceive, as grains of corn Germ and create new life and endlessly Shall live creating. Out of earthly seeds Springs the aerial flower. One spirit proceeds Through change, the same in body and in soul-- The spirit of life and love that triumphs still In its slow struggle towards some far-off goal Through lust and death and the bitterness of will. V. One spirit it is that stirs the fathomless deep Of human minds, that shakes the elms in storm, That sings in passionate music, or on warm Still evenings bosoms forth the tufted sleep Of thistle-seeds that wait a travelling wind. One spirit shapes the subtle rhythms of thought And the long thundering seas; the soul is wrought Of one stuff with the body--matter and mind Woven together in so close a mesh That flowers may blossom into a song, that flesh May strangely teach the loveliest holiest things To watching spirits. Truth is brought to birth Not in some vacant heaven: its beauty springs From the dear bosom of material earth. VI. IN THE HAY-LOFT.