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Underneath the Bough: A Book of Verses

Chapter 47: Rondeau.
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About This Book

A collection of verse that shifts between brisk depictions of modern life—motor races and city heat—and intimate lyrical sonnets exploring love, memory, and devotional longing. Classical and medieval references recur alongside pagan pastoral fantasies that imagine escape to woodland Hesperides, while formal experiments include songs, sonnets, ballades, rondeaux and a pantoum. A seasonal sequence maps moods across spring to winter, and a concluding suite treats mortality through elegy and dark humor. The poems balance energetic narrative scenes with reflective, sometimes elegiac meditations on desire, nature, and death.

Rondeau.

THY breast, dear Doris, ever be
All-hallowed, consecrate to me,
A rest where this my heart may go
Whatever tempests beat and blow;
A shelter that my soul may see
Though all the world speak grievously.
Warmed in its softness, dear, by thee,
My love shall sometime come to know
Thy breast.
And sometime, too, so reverently
Thou couldst not, Sweet, refuse my plea.
I’ll kiss the dimple that I know
Betwixt those little hills of snow
Waits, till my lips press passionately
Thy breast!...