the white boat 55
II
Some Mountain Poems
prologue
variation on a theme by frost
Now in the soft spring air
familiar hills appear
bodiless as a fragrance,
successive shades of blue
that I could step straight through
once I had crossed that meadow
on mere green and cloud-shadow.
That's the old drunkenness.
It would with slight harm pass
if I should go in for it.
The pasture's partly marsh,
the hills run back to harsh
steep slopes and stony rubble --
I've learned that for my trouble;
therefore on poison oak
and toyon and sage that choke
the dry ridges and gulches,
and the one stream fl owing out
(with shadowy pools, and trout)
through gorge and fl at till sunken
in summer, I stay drunken.