Seventeen

All the loud winds were in the garden wood,

All shadows joyfuller than lissom hounds

Doubled in chasing, all exultant clouds

That ever flung fierce mist and eddying fire

Across heavens deeper than blue polar seas

Fled over the sceptre-spikes of the chestnuts,

Over the speckle of the wych-elms' green.

She shouted; then stood still, hushed and abashed

To hear her voice so shrill in that gay roar,

And suddenly her eyelashes were dimmed,

Caught in tense tears of spiritual joy;

For there were daffodils which sprightly shook

Ten thousand ruffling heads throughout the wood,

And every flower of those delighting flowers

Laughed, nodding to her, till she clapped her hands

Crying 'O daffies, could you only speak!'

But there was more. A jay with skyblue shaft

Set in blunt wing, skimmed screaming on ahead.

She followed him. A murrey squirrel eyed

Her warily, cocked upon tail-plumed haunch,

Then, skipping the whirligig of last-year leaves,

Whisked himself out of sight and reappeared

Leering about the hole of a young beech;

And every time she thought to corner him

He scrambled round on little scratchy hands

To peek at her about the other side.

She lost him, bolting branch to branch, at last —

The impudent brat! But still high overhead

Flight on exuberant flight of opal scud,

Or of dissolving mist, florid as flame.

Scattered in ecstasy over the blue. And she

Followed, first walking, giving her bright locks

To the cold fervour of the springtime gale,

Whose rush bore the cloud shadow past the cloud

Over the irised wastes of emerald turf.

And still the huge wind volleyed. Save the gulls,

Goldenly in the sunny blast careering

Or on blue-shadowed underwing at plunge,

None shared with her who now could not but run

The splendour and tumult of th' onrushing spring.

And now she ran no more: the gale gave plumes.

One with the shadows whirled along the grass,

One with the onward smother of veering gulls,

One with the pursuit of cloud after cloud,

Swept she. Pure speed coursed in immortal limbs;

Nostrils drank as from wells of unknown air;

Ears received the smooth silence of racing floods;

Light as of glassy suns froze in her eyes;

Space was given her and she ruled all space.

Spring, author of twifold loveliness,

Who flittest in the mirth of the wild folk,

Profferest greeting in the faces of flowers,

Blowest in the firmamental glory,

Renewest in the heart of the sad human

All faiths, guard thou the innocent spirit

Into whose unknowing hands this noontide

Thou pourest treasure, yet scarce recognised,

That unashamed before man's glib wisdom,

Unabashed beneath the wrath of chance,

She accept in simplicity of homage

The hidden holiness, the created emblem

To be in her, until death shall take her,

The source and secret of eternal spring.

For Anne