AN IMPRESSION RECEIVED FROM A SYMPHONY

There was a day, when I, if that was I,

Surrendered lay beneath a burning sky,

Where overhead the azure ached with heat,

And many red fierce poppies splashed the wheat;

Motion was dead, and silence was complete,

And stains of red fierce poppies splashed the wheat,

And as I lay upon a scent-warm bank,

I fell away, slipped back from earth, and sank,

I lost the place of sky and field and tree,

One covering face obscured the world for me,

And for an hour I knew eternity,

For one fixed face suspended Time for me.

O had those eyes in that extreme of bliss

Shed one more wise and culminating kiss,

My end had come, nor had I lived to quail,

Frightened and dumb as things must do that fail,

And in this last black devil-mocking gale,

Battered and dumb to fight the dark and fail.