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Home  »  The New Poetry  »  Night and Morning Songs

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

Night and Morning Songs

By Gordon Bottomley

My Moon

MY moon was lit in an hour of lilies;

The apple-trees seemed older than ever.

It rose from matted trees that sever

The oats from the meadow, and woke the fillies

That reared in dew and gleamed with dew

And ran like water and shadow, and cried.

It moistened and veiled the oats yet new,

And seemed to drip long drops of the tide,

Of the mother-sea so lately left.

Feathers of flower were each bereft

Of color and stem, and floated low;

Another lily opened then

And lost a little gold dust; but when

The lime-boughs lifted there seemed to go

Some life of the moon, like breath that moves

Or parting glances that flutter and strain—

A ghost with hands the color of doves

And feet the color of rain.