Book 1 — AN IMPRESSION RECEIVED FROM A SYMPHONY
Reading edition
There was a day, when I, if that was I, Surrendered lay beneath a burning sky, Where overhead the azure ached with heat, And many red fierce poppies splashed the wheat; Motion was dead, and silence was complete, And stains of red fierce poppies splashed the wheat,
And as I lay upon a scent-warm bank, I fell away, slipped back from earth, and sank, I lost the place of sky and field and tree, One covering face obscured the world for me, And for an hour I knew eternity, For one fixed face suspended Time for me.
O had those eyes in that extreme of bliss Shed one more wise and culminating kiss, My end had come, nor had I lived to quail, Frightened and dumb as things must do that fail, And in this last black devil-mocking gale, Battered and dumb to fight the dark and fail.