University of Virginia Library

HOLIDAY

About my window in a wreath
Pink roses yield their spicéd breath
So close that I can see and know
The very way that roses grow
From the pink shoot upon the stem
Unto the fullest diadem.
All night the fragrant dew and cool
Lies like a little silver pool
About the corncrake's feet; he stalks
By emerald and by amber walks,
And is ensilvered by the moon
Fron his grey head to his grey shoon.
The wood-dove croons me into rest;
Night has a soft and dreamless breast;
The cuckoo hales me wide awake
From the far hill, the distant brake,
Shouting his cuckoo call in showers
Over my bed as it were flowers.
In the dear evening quietness
The blackbird the sole brawler is,
Keeping the bowers awake and all
The wild wood merry at evenfall
With his Good Night Now, drawled and plain!
Good Night Now, over and over again.
Such quietness on vale and hill,
Such skies of rose and daffodil,
And primrose and the sleepy folk
Wrapped in the silence as a cloak.
'Broidered with roses small and close.
My dreams are drenched with attar of rose.