A Spring Idyll / Patrick MacGill

A Spring Idyll

On my hangings of arras
          Dewdrop and sunlight commingle,
     The music of woods that are endless,
     And infinite seas
          That come with the voices
          Of storm or of calm to the shingle
     In the lilac gray blush of the dawn,
     On the sensuous breeze.

So full of promise is earth
          As a child's gentle laughter,
     The sapphire tints of the water
     Arc fair to the eyes –
          The present is only,
          I know not a past nor hereafter,
     And forth from my covering
     Of saffron and ermine I rise.

~~

Patrick MacGill (1889-1963)

from Songs of a Navvy, 1911

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada and the United States]

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