Not wholly in the busy world, nor quite
Beyond it, blooms the garden that I love.
News from the humming city comes to it
It sound of funeral or of marriage bells.
Then I feel, Harry, that I have given away my whole soul to someone who treats it as if it were a flower to put in his coat, a bit of decoration to charm his vanity, an ornament for a summer's day.
Two Seasons, it is said, exist-
The Summer of the Just,
And this of Ours, diversified
With Prospect, and with Frost-
May not our Second with its First
So infinite compare
That We but recollect the one
The other to prefer?
Then followed that beautiful season... Summer.... Filled was the air with a dreamy and magical light; and the landscape Lay as if new created in all the freshness of childhood.
I am going a long way With these thou seëst-if indeed I go (For all my mind is clouded with a doubt)- To the island-valley of Avilion, Where falls not hail or rain or any snow, Nor ever wind blows loudly; but it lies Deep-meadow'd, happy, fair with orchard lawns And bowery hollows crown'd with summer sea, Where I will heal me of my grievous wound.
He is some brainless, beautiful creature, who should always be here in winter when we have no flowers to look at, and always here in the summer when we want something to chill our intelligence.
O Earth, that hast no voice, confide to me a voice!
O harvest of my lands! O boundless summer growths!
O lavish, brown, parturient earth! O infinite, teeming womb!
A verse to seek, to see, to narrate thee.
I mind how once we lay such a transparent summer morning, How you settled your head athwart my hips and gently turn'd over upon me, And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone, and plunged your tongue to my bare-stript heart, And reach'd till you felt my beard, and reach'd till you held my feet.
In these divine pleasures permitted to me of walks in the June night under moon and stars, I can put my life as a fact before me and stand aloof from its honor and shame.