MINSTREL WEATHER 



that do not fly from winter to the South 

 or to an underground Nirvana may here 

 find reward. Dark blue beads drop from 

 the woodbine. The rose keeps her car- 

 mine caskets, full of other roses; but the 

 bayberry is generous with dove-gray pebble 

 seeds. Witch-hazel, reversing seasons like 

 the eccentric trout who, after all, prob- 

 ably enjoys the solitude at the stream- 

 heads after the other fish have gone- 

 sends wide her mysterious fusillade, and 

 that, too, finds its aim in the floor of the 

 forest. 



Life more remote than that of snowfield 

 or jungle, beneath our tread, guarded from 

 our glances and our hearing unless we 

 seek it out, the subtle cycles of the soil 

 go on everlastingly, alien even to those 

 who know in intimacy the meadows and 

 the woods. Vigorously though it toils, 

 there is a peace in the vision of continuity 

 delicately given. Most of the singers in 

 the mowing grass live for a day, yet next 

 morning the song ascends unbroken. Here 

 on the frontier between the world of the 

 air and that within the earth passports 

 are granted back and forth the red lily 

 is summoned from the depths; the top- 



[94] 



