Lays and Legends (Second Series)

LOVE IN JUNE

Through the glowing meadows aflame
With buttercup gold I came
To the green, still heart of the wood.
A wood-pigeon cooed and cooed,
The hazel-stems grew close,
Like leaves round the heart of a rose,
Round the still, green nest that I chose.

Then I gathered the bracken that grew
In a fairy forest all round,
And I laid it in heaps on the ground
With grass and blossoms and leaves.
I gathered the summer in sheaves,
And pale, rare roses a few,
And spread out a carpet meet
For the touch of my lady's feet.

I waited; the wood was still;
Only one little brown bird
On a hazel swayed and stirred
With the impulse of his song;
And I waited, and time was long.

Then I heard a step on the grass
In the path where the others pass,
And a voice like a voice in a dream;
And I saw a glory, a gleam,
A flash of white through the green
(Her arms and her gown are white);
And the summer sighed her name
As she and the sunshine came:
O sun and blue sky and delight!
O eyes and lips of my queen!

What was done there or said
No one will ever know,
For nobody saw or heard
Save one little, brown, bright bird
Who swayed on a twig overhead,
And he will never betray;
But all who pass by that way,
As they near the spot where we lay
Among the blossoms and grass
Where the leaves and the ferns lay thick
(Though it lies out of reach, out of sight
Of the path where the world may pass),
Feel their heart and their pulse beat quick
In a measure that rhymes with the leaves and flowers,
That rhymes with the summer and sun,
With the lover to win or won,
With the wild-flower crown of delight,
The crown of love that was ours.