AS I LAY . . . As I lay with my lover on a windy hill, snugged in his arms and snaffled in his bosom, I heard a bell toll in the earth while my ball ran slowly down and earth’s great bulk lifted a little and her knell struck wearily into my weird. My lover would have bled and blissed me clean: but how should I fare and I so fearful, a broken fern in my hair? I mourn in the murk of my narrow way with life and death a shade too near: I find my sere frame propped by the shore and before me a large eye, starry and wet, and in my hand a dead sparrow . . . O, my lover, have ruth on me! in toss and touse, a thousand thistles, in thresh of limbs, in choke of throsm: nothing is behind me when I go in, but everything is before us when we come out.
(1945)