'The daffodils are fine this year,' I said; <br />'O yes, but see my crocuses,' said she. <br />And so we entered in and sat at talk <br />Within a little parlour bowered about <br />With garden-noises, filled with garden scent, <br />As some sweet sea-shell rings with pearly chimes <br />And sighs out fragrance of its mother's breast. <br /> <br />We sat at talk, and all the afternoon <br />Whispered about in changing silences <br />Of flush and sudden light and gathering shade, <br />As though some Maestro drew out organ stops <br />Somewhere in heaven. As two within a boat <br />On the wide sea we sat at talk, the hours <br />Lapping unheeded round us as the waves. <br />And as such two will ofttimes pause in speech, <br />Gaze at high heaven and draw deep to their hearts <br />The infinite azure, then meet eyes again <br />And flash it to each other; without words <br />First, and then with voice trembling as trumpets <br />Tremble with fierce breath, voice cadenced too <br />As deep as the deep sea, Aeolian voice, <br />Voice of star-spaces, and the pine-wood's voice <br />In dewy mornings, Life's own awful voice: <br />So did We talk, gazing with God's own eyes <br />Into Life's deeps-ah, how they throbbed with stars! <br />And were we not ourselves like pulsing suns <br />Who, once an aeon met within the void, <br />So fiery close, forget how far away <br />Each orbit sweeps, and dream a little space <br />Of fiery wedding. So our hearts made answering <br />Lightnings all that afternoon through purple mists <br />Of riddled speech; and when at last the sun, <br />Our sentinel, made sign beneath the trees <br />Of coming night, and we arose and passed <br />Across the threshold to the flowers again, <br />We knew a presence walking in the grove, <br />And a voice speaking through the evening's cool <br />Unknown before: though Love had wrought no wrong, <br />His rune was spoken, and another rhyme <br />Writ in his poem by the master Life. <br /> <br />'Pray, pluck me some,' I said. She brought me two, <br />For daffodils were very fine that year,- <br />O very fine, but daffodils no more.<br /><br />Richard Le Gallienne<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-day-of-the-two-daffodils/
