Silent Noon

BY DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI

Your hands lie open in the long fresh grass,--
...The finger-points look through like rosy blooms:
...Your eyes smile peace. The pasture gleams and glooms
'Neath billowing skies that scatter and amass.
All round our nest, far as the eye can pass,
...Are golden kingcup-fields with silver edge
...Where the cow-parsley skirts the hawthorn-hedge.
'Tis visible silence, still as the hour-glass.
Deep in the sun-searched growths the dragon-fly;
Hangs like a blue thread loosened from the sky:--
...So this wing'd hour is dropt to us from above.
Oh! clasp we to our hearts, for deathless dower,
This close-companioned inarticulate hour
...When twofold silence was the song of love.