Richard Aldington

LIKE a gondola of green scented fruits

Drifting along the dank canals at Venice,

You, O exquisite one,

Have entered my desolate city.

The blue smoke leaps

Like swirling clouds of birds vanishing.

So my love leaps forth towards you,

Vanishes and is renewed.

III

A rose-yellow moon in a pale sky

When the sunset is faint vermilion

In the mist among the tree-boughs,

Art thou to me.

As a young beech-tree on the edge of a forest

Stands still in the evening,

Yet shudders through all its leaves in the light air

And seems to fear the stars—

So are you still and so tremble.

The red deer are high on the mountain,

They are beyond the last pine trees.

And my desires have run with them.

The flower which the wind has shaken

Is soon filled again with rain;

So does my mind fill slowly with misgiving

Until you return.