Mating

Round clouds roll in the arms of the wind,  
The round earth rolls in a clasp of blue sky,  
And see, where the budding hazels are thinned,
   The wild anemones lie  
In undulating shivers beneath the wind.
 
Over the blue of the waters ply  
White ducks, a living flotilla of cloud;  
And, look you, floating just thereby,  
   The blue-gleamed drake stems proud  
Like Abraham, whose seed should multiply.
 
In the lustrous gleam of the water, there  
Scramble seven toads across the silk, obscure leaves,
Seven toads that meet in the dusk to share  
   The darkness that interweaves  
The sky and earth and water and live things everywhere.
 
Look now, through the woods where the beech-green spurts
Like a storm of emerald snow, look, see
 A great bay stallion dances, skirts  
   The bushes sumptuously,  
Going outward now in the spring to his brief deserts.
 
Ah love, with your rich, warm face aglow,  
What sudden expectation opens you  
 So wide as you watch the catkins blow  
   Their dust from the birch on the blue  
Lift of the pulsing wind—ah, tell me you know!
 
Ah, surely! Ah, sure from the golden sun  
A quickening, masculine gleam floats in to all
 Us creatures, people and flowers undone,  
   Lying open under his thrall,  
As he begets the year in us. What, then, would you shun?
 
Why, I should think that from the earth there fly  
Fine thrills to the neighbour stars, fine yellow beams
 Thrown lustily off from our full-blown, high  
   Bursting globe of dreams,  
To quicken the spheres that are virgin still in the sky.
 
Do you not hear each morsel thrill  
With joy at travelling to plant itself within  
 The expectant one, therein to instil  
   New rapture, new shape to win,  
From the thick of life wake up another will?
 
Surely, and if that I would spill  
The vivid, ah, the fiery surplus of life,  
 From off my brimming measure, to fill  
   You, and flush you rife  
With increase, do you call it evil, and always evil?