How did she abdicate?
Was it with soft sighs
And pretty feignings of a lover's state,
Or was it solemn-wise,
With altar offerings and rapt vows?
O no! when Love himself was there.
Most housewifely she bound her hair
And went off across the field to milk the cows.
Now, Tiller, hold your grain.
Leave her to sun and rain
And the kind air.
Then trench her with a well-judged measure
Of feeding pleasure.
And give her peace
To dream of her increase
And your good care.
Well might you reap miraculous yield
From such a happy, nourished field!
Walk out, my Love, from little houses,
From these dim walls of old restraints.
Heavy with odorous griefs and melancholy plaints.
Cob webbed with sighs.
Let us find a field where a quiet cow browses,
A field wind-swept to clean content,
And we will love there as God meant,
Under free skies.
A broken ploughed field
In the driving rain,
Rain driven slant-wise
Over the plain.
I long for the rain.
The dull long rain.
For farmlands and ploughlands
And cornlands again.
O grey broken skies.
You were part of my pain !
More still than death
That waits a thousand years
In a new-ploughed field
Of up-turned bones;
So will I wait for you
A thousand years.