You stay for a while beside me with your beauty young and rare, <br />Though your light limbs are as limber as the foal's that follows the mare; <br />Brow fair and young and tender where thought has scarce begun, <br />Hair bright as the breast of the eagle when he strains up to the sun! <br /> <br />In the space of a broken castle I found you on a day <br />When the call of the new-come cuckoo went with me all the way, <br />You stood by un-mortised stones that were rough and black with age, <br />The fawn beloved of the hunter in the panther's broken cage! <br /> <br />And we went down together by paths your childhood knew, <br />Remote you went beside me like the spirit of the dew, <br />Hard were the hedgerows still, sloe-bloom was their scanty dower, <br />You slipped it within your bosom, the bloom that scarce is flower! <br /> <br />And now you stay beside me with your beauty young and rare, <br />Though your light limbs are as limber as the foal's that follows the mare, <br />Brow fair and young and tender where thought has scarce begun, <br />Hair bright as the breast of the eagle when he strains up to the sun!<br /><br />Padraic Colum<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/an-idyll-2/
