(no subject)
From H.D.'s The Flowering of the Rod
[4]
Blue-geese, white-geese, you may say,
yes, I know this duality, this double nostalgia;
I know the insatiable longing
in winter, for palm-shadow
and sand and burnt sea-drift;
but in the summer, as I watch
the wave till its edge of foam
touches the hot sand and instantly
vanishes like snow on the equator,
I would cry out, stay, stay;
then I remember delicate enduring frost
and its mid-winter dawn-patter;
in the hot noon-sun, I think of the grey
opalescent winter-dawn; as the wave
burns on the shingle, I think,
you are less beautiful than frost;
but it is also true that I pray,
O, give me burning blue
and brittle burnt sea-weed
above the tide-line,
as I stand, still unsatisfied,
under the long shadow-on-snow of the pine.