第54章 A BATHER

THICK dappled by circles of sunshine and fluttering shade.

Your bright, naked body advances, blown over by leaves, Half-quenched in their various green, just a point Of you showing, A knee or a thigh, sudden glimpsed, then at once Blotted into The filmy and flickering forest, to start out again Triumphant in smooth, supple roundness, edged Sharp as white ivory, Cool, perfect, with rose rarely tinting your lips and Your breasts, Swelling out from the green in the opulent curves Of ripe fruit, And hidden, like fruit, by the swift intermittence Of leaves.

So, clinging to branches and moss, you advance on the ledges Of rock which hang over the stream, with the wood-smells about you, The pungence of strawberry plants and of gum-oozing spruces, While below runs the water impatient, impatient-to take you, To splash you, to run down your sides, to sing you of deepness, Of pools brown and golden, with brown-and-gold flags on their borders, Of blue, lingering skies floating solemnly over your beauty, Of undulant waters a-sway in the effort to hold youTo keep you submerged and quiescent while over you glories The summer.

Oread, Dryad, or Naiad, or just Woman, clad only in youth and in gallant perfection, Standing up in a great burst of sunshine, you dazzle my eyes Like a snow-star, a moon, your effulgence burns up in a halo, For you are the chalice which holds all the races of men.

You slip into the pool and the water folds over your shoulder, And over the tree-tops the clouds slowly follow your swimming, To behold the way they act.

And the scent of the woods is sweet on this hot summer morning.

AMY LOWELL

LEPRECHAUNS AND CLURICAUNS

OVER where the Irish hedges Are with blossoms white as snow, Over where the limestone ledges Through the soft green grasses show-There the fairies may be seen In their jackets of red and green, Leprechauns and cluricauns, And the other ones, I ween.

And, bedad, it is a wonder To behold the way they act.

They're the lads that seldom blunder, Wise and wary, that's the fact.

You may hold them with your eye;

Look away and off they fly;

Leprechauns and cluricauns, Bedad, but they are sly!

They have heaps of golden treasure Hid away within the ground, Where they spend their days in leisure, And where fairy joys abound;But to mortals not a guinea Will they give-no, not a penny.

Leprechauns and cluricauns, Their gold is seldom found.

Maybe of a morning early As you pass a lonely rath, You may see a little curly-Headed fairy in your path.

He'll be working at a shoe,But he'll have his eye on you-Leprechauns and cluricauns, They know just what to do.

Visions of a life of riches Surely will before you flash;(You'll no longer dig the ditches, You'll be well supplied with cash.)And you'll seize the little man, And you'll hold him--if you can;Leprechauns and cluricauns, 'Tis they're the slipp'ry clan!