Mating

Round clouds roll in the arms of the wind,     The round earth rolls in a clasp of blue sky,     And see, where the budding hazels are thinned,     The wild anemones lie     In undulating shivers beneath the wind.     Over the blue of the waters ply     White ducks, a living flotilla of cloud;     And, look you, floating just thereby,     The blue-gleamed drake stems proud     Like Abraham, whose seed should multiply.     In the lustrous gleam of the water, there     Scramble seven toads across the silk, obscure leaves,     Seven toads that meet in the dusk to share     The darkness that interweaves     The sky and earth and water and live things everywhere.     Look now, through the woods where the beech-green spurts     Like a storm of emerald snow, look, see     A great bay stallion dances, skirts     The bushes sumptuously,     Going outward now in the spring to his brief deserts.     Ah love, with your rich, warm face aglow,     What sudden expectation opens you     So wide as you watch the catkins blow     Their dust from the birch on the blue     Lift of the pulsing wind - ah, tell me you know!     Ah, surely! Ah, sure from the golden sun     A quickening, masculine gleam floats in to all     Us creatures, people and flowers undone,     Lying open under his thrall,     As he begets the year in us. What, then, would you shun?     Why, I should think that from the earth there fly     Fine thrills to the neighbour stars, fine yellow beams     Thrown lustily off from our full-blown, high     Bursting globe of dreams,     To quicken the spheres that are virgin still in the sky.     Do you not hear each morsel thrill     With joy at travelling to plant itself within     The expectant one, therein to instil     New rapture, new shape to win,     From the thick of life wake up another will?     Surely, and if that I would spill     The vivid, ah, the fiery surplus of life,     From off my brimming measure, to fill     You, and flush you rife     With increase, do you call it evil, and always evil?