Blackberries.

Nay, to-day we give no audience to patient Kings and Queens,
To the embassies of glittering English trees,
We refrain from curtsey-bobbing on the heart's bland village greens;
Our business is with blackberries.
To-day I whittle the world as a boy might whittle a stick
To a blue-cleft breathing valley and the blackberries bending over;
She is stained with berries and kisses, with the hard-pressed quick
Kisses of her blackberry lover.
Darken the juices of berries on sunsweet mouth and hands,
But his is the drawn pavilion of shadow under her breast,
And a gathering what may please him, in the brown and lavish lands
Whose lady bends the boughs at his behest.
And he may seek as he list new wine of passion or mirth,
Lady of old, frail porcelain, dryad of English trees.
But he shall remember the beating of her heart against the earth,
And the wild purple jest of blackberries.

—“Robin Hyde.”

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