A Walk in Spring

Do you remember our walk that day
To the church upon the steep
With grass about the wall so grey
Where the weary slumber deep ?
Like a heavenly liand the sunshine lay
To bless them in their sleep.

We passed by the wicket-gate you know
To the tender-budding wood,
Dew lingering in the blooms below.
Where intermittent flowed
Warm sprinkled sunlight to and fro
With the leaflets' frolic mood.

By the broken gate that idly swung
Near umber tilth ajar
Our eyes to faint horizons clung,
Bloomed as young wheat-sheaths are.
You deemed it must be sea that hung
Blent with yon skies afar.

Lo ! red thorns on the briar fair.
And buds uncurling green.
Bird notes flash lavish everywhere.
Spill water brimmed, or lean
Long plainings on the summer air
That seem to sleek the sheen.

A foal lithe frisking round his dam
In cowslipped meadow plays ;
Pushing, a weak-limbed nestling lamb
Beneath his parent sways ;
With cool slant shade each blade's green flame
A sister blade allays.

When we had chosen a primrosed nook.
Some rustle made you start,
You feared a snake and you bade me look.
But I stilled your little heart ;
Last year's sere fern a blackbird shook,
Or a weasel stole athwart.

We gazed beyond the meadows low
And apple-blossomed farm,
To nebulous woodlands where the glow.
Leaning so close and warm,
Woos their shy secrets' yielding flow
With zephyr's whispered charm.

Shy secret of the bud and leaf,
Shy secret of the bloom,
And such as now in Springiime flood
Sweet nests in emerald gloom
Of boscage where some tinch may brood,
And a stray beam only come.

But summer, I deem, had sunk that day
Not into flowers alone ;
She woo'd shy secrets as they lay
In two young hearts unblown ;
Love breathed upon them in their May,
Till each in each had grown.

And I watch your pulses' gentle heaves
Flutter your skin of silk,
Till the shadow of some fluttering leaves
Plays on your wrist of milk,
And even to your white bosom cleaves
Soft amorous lights to bilk.

About you stealing sweetly coy
To yield you all to me —
Birds flowers weaving as they toy,
Vague heaven round me and thee-
Until alone with our young joy
In the world we seem to be !