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Underneath the Bough: A Book of Verses cover

Underneath the Bough: A Book of Verses

Chapter 63: La Jeune Fille.
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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.

La Jeune Fille.

“Elle était bien belle, le matin, sans atours!”

HOW fair, at dawn, how simply did she go,
Watching her new-born garden flowrets thrive,
Spying her bees in their ambrosial hive,
Ling’ring beside each hedge and hawthorn row!
How fair at eventide lead on the maze
Of the mad dance, whilst in her massy hair
Sapphires and roses woven crowned more fair
That face illumined by the torches’ blaze!
How fair was she beneath her pure soft veil,
Outfloating wide upon the listening night;
Silent we stood and far, to watch that sight,
Happy to glimpse her in the starlight pale.
How fair was she! Each day some sweetness gave,
Some vague dear hope, pure thoughts and free from care.
Love, love was all she lacked, to grow more fair.
Peace!... Through the fields they bear her to the grave!...