this city park galled with iron rails shrill with the clanging of ironbound wheels on the pavings of the unquiet streets, little children run and dance and sing with spring-madness in the sun, and the frail white pagodas of blossom stand up on the great green hills of the chestnuts and all their tiers of tiny gargoyle faces stick out gold and red-striped tongues in derision of the silly things of men.

 Jardin du Luxembourg

II

The shadows make strange streaks and mottled arabesques       of violet on the apricot-tinged walks where the thin sunlight lies like flower-petals.

 On the cool wind there is a fragrance indefinable of strawberries crushed in deep woods.

 And the flushed sunlight, the wistful patterns of shadow on gravel walks between tall elms and broad-leaved lindens, the stretch of country, yellow and green, full of little particolored houses, and the faint intangible sky, have lumped my soggy misery, like clay in the brown deft hands of a potter, and moulded a song of it.

Saint Germain-en-Laye

III

In the dark the river spins, Laughs and ripples never ceasing, Swells to gurgle under arches, Swishes past the bows of barges, in its haste to swirl away From the stone walls of the city That has lamps that weight the eddies Down with snaky silver glitter, As it flies it calls me with it Through the meadows to the sea.

 I close the door on it, draw the bolts, Climb the stairs to my silent room; But through the window that swings open Comes again its shuttle-song, Spinning love and night and madness, Madness of the spring at sea.

IV

The streets are full of lilacs lilacs in boys' buttonholes lilacs at women's waists; arms full of lilacs, people trail behind them through the moist night long swirls of fragrance, fragrance of gardens fragrance of hedgerows where they have wandered all the May day where the lovers have held each others hands and lavished vermillion kisses under the portent of the swaying plumes of the funereal lilacs.

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