Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE NEW COTTAGE, by PAUL FORT


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE NEW COTTAGE, by                    
First Line: On earth two lovers can you meet more thrilled and overjoyed than
Last Line: The vale of charms that never cease?
Subject(s): Country Life; Love; Rain


On earth two lovers can you meet more thrilled and overjoyed than we, before the
grace and mystery of a valley so surpassing sweet?

Let it rain! One sees the meads outspread their silks in diapered array; we
imitate it on the bed of tender love, when it rains by day.

When it rains by night the vale resounds with singing frogs. Enchanting sounds!
And from the beechen coppice sweet, minute, the muffled drums discreet!

The skies (tomorrow will be fine) like old cathedral windows shine beneath the
boughs. The birth of morn the vale with carmine will adorn.

Rattle of dew and bubbling springs, how the bright morning Phoebus now toys with
you in his wantonings, while roses crown his infant brow!

Their bells evaporated all, paths, bushes, trees and fields appear: a horse that
distance renders small crosses the vale in swift career,

the vale that noon's bright pinion grazes, made of a web of irised things, gay
dragon-flies and midges wings, and muslin wreathed in
shimmering mazes.

The cattle drowse, 'tis a delight, on the meadow's flower-besprinkled breast:
their tufted tails, in whisking quest, disturb a tuft of daisies white.

And our cottage, that with mantling leaves the spreading ivy covereth, more
easily to draw its breath, unhooks it just below the eaves.

'Tis three o'clock, the calm hour of the bees, the hottest of the day, beneath
their wings the blossoms sway while the whole vale is filled with love.

There his warm heart the sunset lays in mystic silence, and the vale with
fervour takes it, all ablaze, keeps it and thinks there cannot fail

to rise through night's serenity the star that rules the eventide -- Venus with
softly-gleaming knee -- the bride, 'mid vapours pale, the bride!

And these are magic rites: the moon, the stars are asked, Saint Elmo's fires,
and, to declaim the wedding tune, the Milky Way vouchsafes its choirs.

Some evenings we are stay-at-homes. In our garden-close so sweet it is that
sweeter still the vale becomes in listening to our destinies.

For our garden is the leaf, of old from the tree of Eden lightly whirled, where
two bare glow-worms find their world -- made in our semblance we are told.

O fervent nights! O long desires! When the warm zephyrs fan our fires! . . . Is
it enough to christen you -- eternity's true masterpiece --

the vale of charms that never cease?





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