Round apples, burning upon the apple boughs, <br />As the evening flush withdraws, <br />Perfect and satiate, earth's completed vows, <br />In a stillness nothing flaws, <br /> <br />You burn in the branching golden green, you float <br />In humid blue immersed, <br />Strange as if gleaming out of an air remote <br />Where unknown tongues conversed. <br /> <br />Coloured and orbed by the hours, in motionless poise, <br />You are timed, and rounded, and still: <br />But in me is the want that springs, creates, destroys, <br />The want no hours fulfil. <br /> <br />Stirred but a wing, stole but a tremor of light <br />From the cloud, and my heart were aware <br />That its will is to be with the spirit whose joy is flight; <br />I have tasted a timeless air. <br /> <br />Spiritual laughter promises all things free, <br />The heart has a heaven to spend. <br />Where the mind imagines its own, perfection to me <br />Is a prison, a date, and an end.<br /><br />Robert Laurence Binyon<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-apple-boughs/
