SYDNEY DOBELL.
DIVIDED.
I.
An empty sky, a world of heather,
Purple of foxglove, yellow of broom:
We two among them wading together,
Shaking out honey, treading perfume.
Crowds of bees are giddy with clover,
Crowds of grasshoppers skip at our feet:
Crowds of larks at their matins hang over,
Thanking the Lord for a life so sweet.
Flusheth the rise with her purple favor,
Gloweth the cleft with her golden ring,
'Twixt the two brown butterflies waver,
Lightly settle, and sleepily swing.
We two walk till the purple dieth,
And short dry grass under foot is brown,
But one little streak at a distance lieth
Green, like a ribbon, to prank the down.
II.
Over the grass we stepped unto it,
And God, He knoweth how blithe we were!
Never a voice to bid us eschew it;
Hey the green ribbon that showed so fair!
Hey the green ribbon! we kneeled beside it,
We parted the grasses dewy and sheen:
Drop over drop there filtered and slided
A tiny bright beck that trickled between.
Tinkle, tinkle, sweetly it sung to us,
Light was our talk as of faery bells--
Faery wedding-bells faintly rung to us,
Down in their fortunate parallels.
Hand in hand, while the sun peered over,
We lapped the grass on that youngling spring,
Swept back its rushes, smoothed its clover,
And said, "Let us follow it westering."
III.
A dappled sky, a world of meadows;
Circling above us the black rooks fly,
'Forward, backward: lo, their dark shadows
Flit on the blossoming tapestry--
Flit on the beck--for her long grass parteth,
As hair from a maid's bright eyes blown back;
And lo, the sun like a lover darteth
His flattering smile on her wayward track.
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