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Underneath the Bough: A Book of Verses

Chapter 5: Morning, Noon and Night.
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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.

Morning, Noon and Night.

I LOVE thee when the gates of eastern light
Are opened by the Morning-star, aflame;
I love thee when the rose-red heavens proclaim
The coming of their lord, to mortal sight,
And cloudless, when from his imperial height
He looks in glory down. I breathe thy name
With thoughts of love, when drowsy Noon the same
Poised, equal distance holds, twixt dawn and night.
I love thee when the West begins to glow,
And when the restless winds lie still in heaven;
I love thee when the deep’ning shadows fall,
As comes with Tyrian dye, soft, purple even;
But when, from out the waters, rises slow
The noiseless Night, I love thee best of all.