Some one poured a silver liquid from a flawless crystal cup,
Caught it in another chalice, paused and held it up;
Paused a moment, then repoured it, so, from cup to cup -
Flashing in the falling liquid rainbow pictures glowed:
Butterflies on yellow flowers by a lonely road
That climbed upward to far uplands where in sunshine shone
Strips of brown across green swathland where slow ploughs had gone -
Hips and haws and rowan berries, apples on the bough,
Focussing the slanting sunlight they alone know how -
Thistledown and flocking finches, creaking wains that go
From the tented fields of harvest carefully and slow-
Silent noons in breathless woodlands where a leaf does fall
With a sudden tinkling clatter if one stirs at all -
Scarlet toadstools by the ridings, cobwebs on the thorn,
Senile bracken dank with dewdrops left undried since dawn,
Swallows on the stretching wires by the damp highway,
Rustling dead leaves on the footpath, golden haze all day:
Golden days of dying summer, days that leave a pang
In the memory which caught them - as the robin sang.