See, the grass is full of stars,
Fallen in their brightness;
Hearts they have of shining gold,
Rays of shining whiteness.

Buttercups have honeyed hearts,
Bees they love the clover,
But I love the daisies' dance
All the meadow over.

Blow, O blow, you happy winds,
Singing summer's praises,
Up the field and down the field
A-dancing with the daisies.

Something strange is creeping across me.
La Celestina has only to warble the first few bars
Of "I Thought about You" or something mellow from
Amadigi di Gaula for everything--a mint-condition can
Of Rumford's Baking Powder, a celluloid earring, Speedy
Gonzales, the latest from Helen Topping Miller's fertile
Escritoire, a sheaf of suggestive pix on greige, deckle-edged
Stock--to come clattering through the rainbow trellis
Where Pistachio Avenue rams the 2300 block of Highland
Fling Terrace. He promised he'd get me out of this one,

O Harcourt, Whom th' ingenuous Love of Arts
Has carry'd from Thy native Soil, beyond
Th' eternal Alpine Snows, and now detains
In Italy's waste Realms, how long must we
Lament Thy Absence? Whilst in sweet Sojourn
Thou view'st the Reliques of old Rome; or what,
Unrival'd Authors by their Presence, made
For ever venerable, rural Seats,
Tibur, and Tusculum, or Virgil's Urn
Green with immortal Bays, which haply Thou,
Respecting his great Name, dost now approach

'Rover, rover, cattle-drover, where go you to-day?'
I go to Cuppacumalomga, fifty miles away;
Over plains where Summer rains have sung a song of glee,
Over hills where laughing rills go seeking for the sea,
I go to Cuppacumalonga, to my brother Bill.
Then come along, ah, come along!
Ah, come to Cuppacumalonga!
Come to Cuppacumalonga Hill!

'Rover, rover, cattle-drover, how do you get there?'
For twenty miles I amble on upon my pony mare,
The walk awhile and talk awhile to country men I know,

As after noon, one summer's day,
Venus stood bathing in a river;
Cupid a-shooting went that way,
New strung his bow, new fill'd his quiver.

With skill he chose his sharpest dart:
With all his might his bow he drew:
Swift to his beauteous parent's heart
The too well-guided arrow flew.

I faint! I die! the Goddess cry'd:
O cruel, could'st thou find none other,
To wreck thy spleen on? Parricide!
Like Nero, thou hast slain thy mother.

Poor Cupid sobbing scarce could speak;
Indeed, Mamma, I did not know ye:

The dews of summer nighte did falle,
The moone (sweete regente of the skye)
Silver'd the walles of Cumnor Halle,
And manye an oake that grewe therebye.

Nowe noughte was hearde beneath the skies,
(The soundes of busye lyfe were stille,)
Save an unhappie ladie's sighes,
That issued from that lonelye pile.

"Leicester," shee cried, "is thys thy love
That thou so oft has sworne to mee
To leave mee in thys lonelye grove,
Immurr'd in shameful privitie?

"No more thou com'st with lover's speede,
Thy once-beloved bryde to see;

The silken threads by viewless spinners spun,
Which float so idly on the summer air,
And help to make each summer morning fair,
Shining like silver in the summer sun,
Are caught by wayward breezes, one by one,
Are blown to east and west and fastened there,
Weaving on all the roads their sudden snare.
No sign which road doth safest, freest run,
The wingèd insects know, that soar so gay
To meet their death upon each summer day.
How dare we any human deed arraign;
Attempt to recon any moment's cost;

Once when I saw a cripple
Gasping slowly his last days with the white plague,
Looking from hollow eyes, calling for air,
Desperately gesturing with wasted hands
In the dark and dust of a house down in a slum,
I said to myself
I would rather have been a tall sunflower
Living in a country garden
Lifting a golden-brown face to the summer,
Rain-washed and dew-misted,
Mixed with the poppies and ranking hollyhocks,
And wonderingly watching night after night
The clear silent processionals of stars.

When red-nosed Winter takes the road,
An icicle his walking-stick,
When frost is on the woodman's load,
And snow is falling fast and thick,
Come, lusty youth and sapless eld,
Let's make a circle round the blaze
And talk of stumps,
Of nasty bumps,
That flew and came in sunny days.
For Cricket is played again, again,
At freezing time in Hull or Bath;
When summer's done the game's not gone--
There's Cricket on the Hearth!

Here's Jones from Rugby, Eton Jack,
And Grandpapa who, long ago,

I wish it were spring in the world.

Let it be spring!
Come, bubbling, surging tide of sap!
Come, rush of creation!
Come, life! surge through this mass of mortification!
Come, sweep away these exquisite, ghastly first-flowers,
which are rather last-flowers!
Come, thaw down their cool portentousness, dissolve them:
snowdrops, straight, death-veined exhalations of white and purple crocuses,
flowers of the penumbra, issue of corruption, nourished in mortification,
jets of exquisite finality;
Come, spring, make havoc of them!