background image
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.