Underneath the Bough: A Book of Verses

Chapter 53: Spring. MAY EVENING.

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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.

Spring.
MAY EVENING.

SILENCE and peace. The warm, love-bringing Night

From the pure zenith soft and slow descending

Lulls the sweet air to rest, with the day’s ending,

Save where the dark bat wheels his fickle flight.

Deep glows the rosy-golden West, still bright,

Beyond the plumy toss of elms down-bending,

Whilst on the close-cut lawns, blurring and bending,

Tall chapel-windows cast their ruddy light.

Now the clear blue of the mid dome of heaven

Darkens, immeasurably deep and still.

That one full star which ushers in the even

Burns in rapt glory o’er the steadfast spire;

And the Night-angel strews at his sweet will

The silvern star-dust of the heavenly choir.