THE DAY OF THE TWO DAFFODILS

‘ The daffodils are fine this year,’ I said;

‘ O yes, but see my crocuses,’ said she.

And so we entered in and sat at talk

Within a little parlour bowered about

With garden-noises, filled with garden scent,

As some sweet sea-shell rings with pearly chimes

And sighs out fragrance of its mother's breast.

We sat at talk, and all the afternoon

Whispered about in changing silences

Of flush and sudden light and gathering shade,

As though some Maestro drew out organ stops

Somewhere in heaven. As two within a boat

On the wide sea we sat at talk, the hours

Lapping unheeded round us as the waves.

And as such two will ofttimes pause in speech,

Gaze at high heaven and draw deep to their hearts

The infinite azure, then meet eyes again

And flash it to each other; without words

First, and then with voice trembling as trumpets

Tremble with fierce breath, voice cadenced too

As deep as the deep sea, Aeolian voice,

Voice of star-spaces, and the pine-wood's voice

In dewy mornings, Life's own awful voice:

So did We talk, gazing with God's own eyes

Into Life's deeps — ah, how they throbbed with stars!

And were we not ourselves like pulsing suns

Who, once an aeon met within the void,

So fiery close, forget how far away

Each orbit sweeps, and dream a little space

Of fiery wedding. So our hearts made answering

Lightnings all that afternoon through purple mists

Of riddled speech; and when at last the sun,

Our sentinel, made sign beneath the trees

Of coming night, and we arose and passed

Across the threshold to the flowers again,

We knew a presence walking in the grove,

And a voice speaking through the evening's cool

Unknown before: though Love had wrought no wrong,

His rune was spoken, and another rhyme

Writ in his poem by the master Life.

‘ Pray, pluck me some,’ I said. She brought me two,

For daffodils were very fine that year,—

O very fine, but daffodils no more.