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And Plough-month peters out . . its thermal power

Squandered in sighs and poems and hopeless thought,

Which corn and honey, wine, soap, wax, oil ought

Upon my farmling to have chivvied into flower.

I burn, not silly with remorse, in sour

Flat heat of the dying month I stretch out taut:

Twenty-four dawns the topaz woman wrought

To smile to me is gone. These days devour

Memory: what were you elbowed on your side?

Supine, your knee flexed? do I hear your words

Faint as a nixe, in our grove, saying farewells? . .

At five I get up sleepless to decide

What I will not today do; ride out: hear birds

Antiphonal at the dayspring, and nothing else.