Oh the green glimmer of apples in the orchard, <br />Lamps in a wash of rain! <br />Oh the wet walk of my brown hen through the stackyard, <br />Oh tears on the window pane! <br /> <br />Nothing now will ripen the bright green apples, <br />Full of disappointment and of rain, <br />Brackish they will taste, of tears, when the yellow dapples <br />Of autumn tell the withered tale again. <br /> <br />All round the yard it is cluck, my brown hen, <br />Cluck, and the rain-wet wings, <br />Cluck, my marigold bird, and again <br />Cluck for your yellow darlings. <br /> <br />For the grey rat found the gold thirteen <br />Huddled away in the dark, <br />Flutter for a moment, oh the beast is quick and keen, <br />Extinct one yellow-fluffy spark. <br /> <br />Once I had a lover bright like running water, <br />Once his face was laughing like the sky; <br />Open like the sky looking down in all its laughter <br />On the buttercups, and the buttercups was I. <br /> <br />What, then, is there hidden in the skirts of all the blossom? <br />What is peeping from your wings, oh mother hen? <br />’Tis the sun who asks the question, in a lovely haste for wisdom; <br />What a lovely haste for wisdom is in men! <br /> <br />Yea, but it is cruel when undressed is all the blossom, <br />And her shift is lying white upon the floor, <br />That a grey one, like a shadow, like a rat, a thief, a rain-storm, <br />Creeps upon her then and gathers in his store. <br /> <br />Oh the grey garner that is full of half-grown apples, <br />Oh the golden sparkles laid extinct! <br />And oh, behind the cloud-sheaves, like yellow autumn dapples, <br />Did you see the wicked sun that winked!<br /><br />David Herbert Lawrence<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/ballad-of-another-ophelia-2/
