A gold-green mist across the murmuring town.

[Pg 3]

By the slow streams the frogs all day and night

Dream without thought of pain or heed of ill,

Watching the long warm silent hours take flight,

And ever with soft throats that pulse and thrill,

From the pale-weeded shallows trill and trill,

Tremulous sweet voices, flute-like, answering

One to another glorying in the spring.

All day across the ever-cloven soil,

Strong horses labour, steaming in the sun,

Down the long furrows with slow straining toil,

Turning the brown clean layers; and one by one

The crows gloom over them till daylight done

Finds them asleep somewhere in duskèd lines

Beyond the wheatlands in the northern pines.

The old year's cloaking of brown leaves that bind

The forest floor-ways, plated close and true—

The last love's labour of the autumn wind—

Is broken with curled flower buds white and blue

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