EARTH which has known so many passages <br />Of April air, so many marriages <br />Of strange and lovely atoms breeding light, <br />Never may find again that lost delight. <br />In the sharp sky, the frosty deepnesses, <br />There are still birds to barb the silences, <br />There are still fields to meet the morning on, <br />But those who made them beautiful have gone. <br />Diamonds are flung by other smoking springs, <br />But where is he that cropped their offerings— <br />The pick-purse of enchantments, riding by, <br />Whistling his 'Go and Be Hanged, That's Twice Good bye'? <br />Who such a frolic pomp of blessing made <br />To kiss a little pretty dairymaid. . . . <br />And country wives with bare and earth-burnt knees, <br />And boys with beer, and smiles from balconies. . . . <br />The greensleeve girl, apprentice-equerry, <br />Tending great men with slant-eye mockery: <br />'Then Mr Sam says, ‘Riding's hot,’ he says, <br />Tasting their ale and waving twopences. . . . ' <br />Into one gaze they swam, a moment swirled, <br />One fiery paintbox of the body's world— <br />Into Sam's eye, that flying bushranger— <br />Swinging their torches for earth's voyager. <br />And how the blood sang, and the senses leapt, <br />And cells that under tents of horn had slept <br />Rose dancing, at the black and faceless bale <br />Of gallows-flesh that had not girl nor ale!<br /><br />Kenneth Slessor<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-country-ride/
