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Amy Lowell
I STOOD in my window
looking at the double cherry :
A great height of white stillness.
Underneath a sky
the colour of milky grey jade.
Suddenly a crow flew between me and the tree —
Swooping, falling, in a shadow-black curve —
And blotted himself out in the blurred branches
of a leafless ash.
There he stayed for some time,
and I could only distinguish him by his
slight moving.
Then a wind caught the upper branches of the cherry,
And the long, white stems nodded up and down,
casually, to me in the window.
Nodded — but overhead the grey jade clouds
(To be sung)
I WILL pluck from my tree a cherry-blossom wand,
And carry it in my merciless hand,
So I will drive you, so bewitch your eyes,
With a beautiful thing that can never grow wise.
Light are the petals that fall from the bough,
And lighter the love that I offer you now;
In a spring day shall the tale be told
Of the beautiful things that will never grow old.
The blossoms shall fall in the night wind.
And I will leave you so, to be kind:
Eternal in beauty are short-lived flowers.
Eternal in beauty, these exquisite hours.
I will pluck from my tree a cherry-blossom wand,
And carry it in my merciless hand,
So I will drive you, so bewitch your eyes.