Rise toward a rain of clover-blooms, as lakes Pout gentle mounds of plashment up to meet Big shower-drops. Now the little winds, as bees, Bowing the blooms come wandering where I lie Mixt soul and body with the clover-tufts, Light on my spirit, give from wing and thigh Rich pollens and divine sweet irritants To every nerve, and freshly make report Of inmost Nature's secret autumn-thought Unto some soul of sense within my frame That owns each cognizance of the outlying five, And sees, hears, tastes, smells, touches, all in one. Tell me, dear Clover (since my soul is thine, Since I am fain give study all the day, To make thy ways my ways, thy service mine, To seek me out thy God, my God to be, And die from out myself to live in thee) -- Now, Cousin Clover, tell me in mine ear: Go'st thou to market with thy pink and green? Of what avail, this color and this grace? Wert thou but squat of stem and brindle-brown, Still careless herds would feed. A poet, thou: What worth, what worth, the whole of all thine art? Three-Leaves, instruct me! I am sick of price. Framed in the arching of two clover-stems Where-through I gaze from off my hill, afar, The spacious fields from me to Heaven take on Tremors of change and new significance To th' eye, as to the ear a simple tale Begins to hint a parable's sense beneath. The prospect widens, cuts all bounds of blue Where horizontal limits bend, and spreads Into a curious-hill'd and curious-valley'd Vast, Endless before, behind, around; which seems Th' incalculable Up-and-Down of Time Made plain before mine eyes. The clover-stems Still cover all the space; but now they bear, For clover-blooms, fair, stately heads of men With poets' faces heartsome, dear and pale -- Sweet visages of all the souls of time Whose loving service to the world has been In the artist's way expressed and bodied. Oh, In arms' reach, here be Dante, Keats, Chopin, Raphael, Lucretius, Omar, Angelo, Beethoven, Chaucer, Schubert, Shakespeare, Bach, And Buddha (sweetest masters! Let me lay These arms this once, this humble once, about Your reverend necks -- the most containing clasp, For all in all, this world e'er saw!) and there, Yet further on, bright throngs unnamable Of workers worshipful, nobilities In the Court of Gentle Service, silent men, Dwellers in woods, brooders on helpful art, And all the press of them, the fair, the large, That wrought with beauty. Lo, what bulk is here? Now comes the Course-of-things, shaped like an Ox, Slow browsing, o'er my hillside, ponderously -- The huge-brawned, tame, and workful Course-of-things, That hath his grass, if earth be round or flat, And hath his grass, if empires plunge in pain Or faiths flash out. This cool, unasking Ox Comes browsing o'er my hills and vales of Time, And thrusts me out his tongue, and curls it, sharp, And sicklewise, about my poets' heads, And twists them in, all -- Dante, Keats, Chopin, Raphael, Lucretius, Omar, Angelo,