The only Pretty Ring-Time

See now, where Spring has put young leaves

Fluttering like an emerald snow

Round the beech-trunks, and lovers enacting

Earth’s quaint mythologies below.

Another Venus, another Mars,

Before the Vulcan-net of crude

Fact mews them up, believe Creation

Was only built to frame their mood.

And now the green goes out of the Spring:

The lovers quarrel: one mind jolts

Upon its mate. But still, it is Hera

And Zeus playing at thunderbolts.

Disgruntled fools, you would think yourselves

Fortunate, did you guess how soon

Love, its Olympian discords vanished,

Becomes a barrel-organ tune.