Classic and Contemporary Poetry
THE FOREST OF CRECY, by PAUL FORT First Line: At a pace to reawake my dreaming fantasy, I started then, my mind Last Line: For a sapphire, fare thee well, my forest of crecy! Subject(s): Forests; Life; Love; Woods | ||||||||
At a pace to reawake my dreaming fantasy, I started then, my mind for new adventures keen. They say 'tis full of game, the forest of Crecy, but only flowers I saw and tunnels through the green -- sometimes the noiseless shots of a tall service-tree -- 'neath vaulting shrubs whose fronds as lithe as fairies showed, that the blue breeze which sifts the branches and the vines on either side entwines with the whiteness of the road. Was I alone? Not I, my Francis. With me went my fair one, plucking flowers, the scarlet pimpernel especially, whose bloom adorns my dark lapel and always breaks. One culls another. Singing gay one takes the road again. Ah, if I could but say that morn how we had hearts at ease and minds content! From naught, from everything, Francis, and from the breeze which, scourging here and there, o'er its green empire ranged and from the kisses sweet we in the breeze exchanged. The road is straight and white and long will last, 'twould seem. We should have liked it well if it had never ended (a thousand years endured the Sleeping Beauty's dream), if for us to the end of love, of life it had extended, or at least till the death of day. O to see, beneath the bough, a hundred tunnels green for a hundred rays unclose long tombs in that grave hour of sunset's burning rose. This thing we did not see. How we regret it now! What did we see? The squirrel flaunting his tail with glee. The nuthatch with sharp beak drilling the linden-tree. Three baby rabbits steal from a wave of marguerites. The antlered stag uprear that lordly head of his 'neath silver rays to tear the veil of clematis. Such toadstools as might serve King Oberon for seats. And 'neath acacia, beech and birch with silver sheen, hammocks of fern to lull Titania the Queen. -- Alas, I lie: we saw no trace of all of this. From the shady forest verge uprose the scent of mint, crushed by our careless feet, so troubling and so strong, that my love with those green eyes where blue reflections glint, making pretence to faint, poured all my arm along her warm and agile waist, vine that my strife had torn. "A pheasant!" I exclaimed when tired with too much pleasure. Pheasant? A bare-faced lie. -- ". . . Hark to the distant horn. . . ." "No, 'tis the angelus chiming for noon, my treasure." At the prick of noon the road, as at a signal given, turned, supple, and became the white neck of a swan, within whose gaping beak a lucent sapphire shone, offered, with gesture mild, to the wide azure heaven. In the midst of the oval sapphire of the clearing (we had strayed for a full hour or more beneath the forest shade) with myriad panes Mortcerf through calm air glittered bright, half up a mountainside, all swathed in vapours light, where the hot sun of noon its rainbow poured for me. For a sapphire, fare thee well, my forest of Crecy! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE PRINCESS WAKES IN THE WOOD by RANDALL JARRELL CHAMBER MUSIC: 20 by JAMES JOYCE ADVICE TO A FOREST by MAXWELL BODENHEIM A SOUTH CAROLINA FOREST by AMY LOWELL JOY IN THE WOODS by CLAUDE MCKAY IN BLACKWATER WOODS by MARY OLIVER THE PLACE I WANT TO GET BACK TO by MARY OLIVER A PORTFOLIO OF SKETCHES: THE LITTLE ANNUITANT by PAUL FORT |
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