“IN ALL THINGS GRACIOUS THERE IS A THOUGHT OF YOU”

In all things gracious there is a thought of you:

In the soft fall of April rain, the blue

Of April skies in the morning, the full moon

Of windless August nights, perfect and still,

When the white moonlight lies across the hill

Of new-cut stubble, where a little mist,

Flickering, rises. In the song of birds

My heart turns to you, emptied all of words

By loveliness, and in the poise and swing

Of flowering grasses, and in the lingering

Grave, spacious fall of evening on the earth,

When the wide, liquid spaces of the sky,

Above the dewy fields and darkening lanes,

And windless water lying quietly,

Yield up the daylight, until none remains.

I could endure — or so it seems to me —

Without your presence, a life of winter days,

Stark, grey Novembers stretching endlessly,

Where I, forgetting laughter and bright things,

Might set my face to duty; but the stir,

The loveliness, the poignancy of springs,

The growth, the rise, the universal press

Up to sensation — ah, I could not bear

To live an April through, but must take wings

Out of a world too fair for loneliness.