Francis Brett Young

The robin on my lawn He was the first to tell How, in the frozen dawn,

Whither, O, my sweet mistress, must I follow thee? For when I hear thy distant footfall nearing, And wait on thy appearing,

These winter days on Lettermore The brown west wind it sweeps the bay, And icy rain beats on the bare

This is the image of my last content: My soul shall be a little lonely lake, So hidden that no shadow of man may break

When the evening came my love said to me: Let us go into the garden now that the sky is cool; The garden of black hellebore and rosemary,

Out of that high pavilion Where the sick, wind-harassed sun In the whiteness of the day

Over that morn hung heaviness, until, Near sunless noon, we heard the ship's bell beating A melancholy staccato on dead metal;

Were there lovers in the lanes of Atlantis: Meeting lips and twining fingers In the mild Atlantis springtime?

Why have you stolen my delight In all the golden shows of Spring When every cherry-tree is white

Before my window, in days of winter hoar Huddled a mournful wood: Smooth pillars of beech, domed chestnut, sycamore,

(In the south of Italy the peasants put out the eyes of a captured quail so that its cries may attract the flocks of spring migrants into their nets.) All through the night I have heard the stuttering call of a blind quail,