Midsummer dreams

I

There is a tall white weed growing at the top of this sand hill:

In the grass

It is very still.

It lifts its heavy bracts of flattened bloom

Against the sky

Hazily grey with brume.

Out over yonder boats pass

And the swallows

Flatten themselves on the grass.

The lake is silvering beneath the heat.

The wind's feet

Touch lazily each crest,

Like white gulls slow flapping

To windward.

One rose white cloud slowly disengages, loosening itself,

And stands

Above the larkspur-coloured water:

Like Dione's daughter

Braiding up her wet hair with her pale hands.

II

The moon puts out her face at a rift between the trees,

Which do not lift one drooping leaf, this night of June.

There is no lazy breeze to set them clashing adrift.

Thin gleams of silver rise and break in the air,

Fireflies here and there.

Forest of blue masses suddenly quivering with rapid points of white,

Are the forests beneath the sea where no breeze passes

As still as you to-night?

The moon puts out her face at a rift between the trees;

Through my window, the bed cut evenly with diagonal shafts of light,

Is a boat rocking out adrift.

Under it bend the silver tips of the dark blue coral trees,

And fireflies like glass fish

Drift and ripple upwards in the breeze.