Bleating of sheep, the bark of a dog and, dun-yellow in the snow a long flock straggles. Crying of lambs, twitching noses of snowflecked ewes, the proud curved horns of a regal broadgirthed ram, yellow backs steaming; then, tails and tracks in the snow, and the responsible lope of the dog who stops with a paw lifted to look back at the baked apple face of the shepherd.

 Cercedilla

XXIII JULIET

 You were beside me on the stony path down from the mountain.

And I was the rain that lashed such flame into your cheeks and the sensuous rolling hills where the mists clung like garments.

 I was the sadness that came out of the languid rain and the soft dove-tinted hills and choked you with the harsh embrace of a lover so that you almost sobbed.

 Siete Picos

XXIV

When they sang as they marched in step on the long path that wound to the valley I followed lonely in silence.

When they sat and laughed by the hearth where our damp clothes steamed in the flare of the noisy prancing flames I sat still in the shadow for their language was strange to me.

But when as they slept I sat and watched by the door of the cabin I was not lonely for they lay with quiet faces stroked by the friendly tongues of the silent firelight and outside the white stars swarmed like gnats about a lamp in autumn an intelligible song.

 Cercedilla

XXV

I lie among green rocks on the thyme-scented mountain. The thistledown clouds and the sky grey-white and grey-violet are mirrored in your dark eyes as in the changing pools of the mountain.

I have made for your head a wreath of livid crocuses. How strange they are the wan lilac crocuses against your dark smooth skin in the intense black of your wind-towseled hair.

 Sleet from the high snowfields snaps a lash down the mountain bruising the withered petals of the last crocuses.

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