Am meisten gelesen ▸
Louise Morey Bowman
I left the crowded cities,
With their knowledge and their folly,
And wandered down the by-ways,
So lonely, wild and free.
But not for me the mountain
With its peak of purple grandeur,
The forest, or the desert,
Or the great unresting sea.
For in a homely valley
The air was sweet with honey,
And there the brown Earth-Mother
Held a clover field for me.
Heigh-ho! Earth's sweet, red clover
And the warmth and kindly healing!
I laid me down and listened
To the bee's deep, drowsy runes,
When I lay down
In a clover place,
With eyelids closed,
In a clover place,
A little wind came to my face.
One gentle wind
Blew on my mouth,
And I said, "It will quiver by.
What little wind now can it be?"
And I lay still
Where the clovers were.
But when I raised my lids to see,
Then it was a butterfly.
“My sweet,” you sang, and, “Sweet,” I sang,
And sweet we sang together,
Glad to be young as the world was young,
Two colts too strong for a tether.
Shall ever a spring be like that spring,
Or apple blossoms as white;
Or ever clover smell like the clover
We lay upon that night?
Shall ever your hand lie in my hand,
Pulsing to it, I wonder;
Or have the gods, being jealous gods,
Envied us our thunder?
This much the gods vouchsafe today:
That we two lie in the clover,
Watching the heavens dip and sway,
With galleons sailing over.
This much is granted for an hour:
That we are young and tender,
That I am bee and you are flower,
Honey-mouthed and swaying slender.
This sweet of sweets is ours now:
To wander through the land,
Plucking an apple from its bough
To toss from hand to hand.
No thing is certain, joy nor sorrow,
Except the hour we know it;
Oh, wear my heart today; tomorrow
Who knows where the winds will blow it?
I GIVE the undertakers permission to haul my body
to the graveyard and to lay away all, the head, the
feet, the hands, all: I know there is something left
over they can not put away.
Let the nanny goats and the billy goats of the shanty
people eat the clover over my grave and if any yellow
hair or any blue smoke of flowers is good enough to grow
over me let the dirty-fisted children of the shanty
people pick these flowers.
I have had my chance to live with the people who have
too much and the people who have too little and I chose
one of the two and I have told no man why.
Klang! Kling! the cow-bells ring
As the cows come home at night.
Slowly they pass over the grass,
Black and brown and white.
Sleepy and slow each one will go
With daisies and clover in her;
At the milking stall she'll give them all
As milk for Kenton's dinner.