Always before your voice my soul

half-beautiful and wholly droll

is as some smooth and awkward foal,

whereof young moons begin

the newness of his skin,

so of my stupid sincere youth

the exquisite failure uncouth

discovers a trembling and smooth

Unstrength, against the strong

silences of your song;

or as a single lamb whose sheen

of full unsheared fleece is mean

beside its lovelier friends, between

your thoughts more white than wool

My thought is sorrowful:

but my heart smote in trembling thirds

of anguish quivers to your words,

As to a flight of thirty birds

shakes with a thickening fright

the sudden fooled light.

it is the autumn of a year:

When through the thin air stooped with fear,

across the harvest whitely peer

empty of surprise

death's faultless eyes

(whose hand my folded soul shall know

while on faint hills do frailly go

The peaceful terrors of the snow,

and before your dead face

which sleeps, a dream shall pass)

and these my days their sounds and flowers

Fall in a pride of petaled hours,

like flowers at the feet of mowers

whose bodies strong with love

through meadows hugely move.

yet what am i that such and such

mysteries very simply touch

me, whose heart-wholeness overmuch

Expects of your hair pale,

a terror musical?

while in an earthless hour my fond

soul seriously yearns beyond

this fern of sunset frond on frond

opening in a rare

Slowness of gloried air . . .

The flute of morning stilled in noon—

noon the implacable bassoon—

now Twilight seeks the thrill of moon,

washed with a wild and thin

despair of violin