Chapter XVI

All that lives about us here,
Beneath a radiance soft and clear,
Soft grasses, tender branches, hollyhocks,
The shade that soothes them, the wind that mocks,
The singing birds that one by one
Join the brilliant swarm,
Like jewel-clusters, warm
With sun;
All that lives within the garden wall,
Love us ingenuously;
And we,
We love them all.

Dear to us the lilies that grow high;
The reaching sunflowers clearer than the sky
--Circles that bright lambent tongues enroll--
Burn, with their glowing fervency, our soul.

The simple flowers, phlox and lilac tall,
Down by the wall,
Are yearning to be near us too,
And the involuntary grass,
On the lawn when we pass,
Opens its moistened eyes that are the dew.

We live with the flowers and the grass,
Simple, pure and ardent still,
Lost in our love,
Like single sheaves within the infinite wheat,
And proudly let imperial summer pass
And from above
Sweep and pierce with clarity
Body, heart and will.