John Bull

Your hands lie open in the long, fresh grass,—

The finger-points look through like rosy blooms:

Your eyes smile peace. The pasture gleams and glooms

’Neath billowing skies that scatter and amass.

All round our nest, far as the eye can pass,

Are golden kingcup-fields with silver edge

Where the cow-parsley skirts the hawthorn hedge.

’Tis visible silence, still as the hour-glass.

Deep in the sun-searched growths the dragon-fly

Hangs like a blue thread loosened from the sky,—

So this wing’d hour is dropped to us from above.

Oh! clasp we to our hearts, for deathless dower,

This close-companioned inarticulate hour

When twofold silence was the song of love.