The Maid's Thought

Why listen, even the water is sobbing for something.

The west wind is dead, the waves

Forget to hate the cliff, in the upland canyons

Whole hillsides burst aglow

With golden broom. Dear how it rained last month,

And every pool was rimmed

With sulphury pollen dust of the wakening pines.

Now tall and slender suddenly

The stalks of purple iris blaze by the brooks,

The pencilled ones on the hill;

This deerweed shivers with gold, the white globe-tulips

Blow out their silky bubbles,

But in the next glen bronze-bells nod, the does

Scalded by some hot longing

Can hardly set their pointed hoofs to expect

Love but they crush a flower;

Shells pair on the rock, birds mate, the moths fly double.

O it Is time for us now

Mouth kindling mouth to entangle our maiden bodies

To make that burning flower.