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Sarojini Naidu
Once in the dream of a night I stood
Lone in the light of a magical wood,
Soul-deep in visions that poppy-like sprang;
And spirits of Truth were the birds that sang,
And spirits of Love were the stars that glowed,
And spirits of Peace were the streams that flowed
In that magical wood in the land of sleep.
Lone in the light of that magical grove,
I felt the stars of the spirits of Love
Gather and gleam round my delicate youth,
And I heard the song of the spirits of Truth;
To quench my longing I bent me low
By the streams of the spirits of Peace that flow
In that magical wood in the land of sleep.
The opal afternoon
Is cool, and very still.
A wash of tawny air,
Sea-green that melts to gold,
Bathes all the skyline, hill by hill.
Out of the black-topped pinelands
A black crow calls,
And the year seems old!
A woman from a doorway sings,
And from the valley-slope a sheep-dog barks,
And through the umber woods the echo falls.
Then silence on the still world lies,
And faint and far the birds fly south,
And behind the dark pines drops the sun,
And a small wind wakes and sighs,
And Summer, see, is done!
O for the coat of a dog
in a chill wind
or a bear
pleasant as a storm
the woods are canonical
for trouble
being full of such
extraordinary rooms
curtains of light
where I go to sleep
enchantments
whispering in the ear
flat on the ground
as if dead
fingers as high
as they could reach
my head aching with too much night
I hear nothing but owl
meet with nothing but wild stone and woods
in our paper office
in our cleared wood
that only mind will ever own
where to write
letters home to
I come to the country to hunt
gun like a painted name on a picture
with a far-off wood
which troubles me without reason
the whole difference
between a wood and an army
is love
they that laugh and do nothing
only respect the grave
razing all the strongholds
giving the land a massacre in the fields
but none of the men I write about
burn like candles
no place or nature at all
prevented disquiet
or the count of commodities
so spoke the old wood
in my fallen ear
the multitude rising
have been a salve
for the heart simple
as rain in the woods
more in it than any
weary answer
time is a thin woods
I am sure I shall save
for one night
an urge to clap
but not to give a hand
to serve but never to service
like the woods we fell
familiar as any friend
with my heart of a captain
pain is freight I have set down
at noon to the wood
a tract of masts
and the hard land like a merchant
without any receipt