Three songs

When green as a river was the barley,
Green as a river the rye,
I waded deep and began to parley
With a youth whom I heard sigh.
'I seek', said he, 'a lovely lady,
A nymph as bright as a queen,
Like a tree that drips with pearls
Her shady locks of hair were seen;
And all the rivers became her flocks
Though their wool you cannot shear,
Because of the love of her flowing locks,
The kingly sun like a swain came strong,
Unheeding of her scorn,
Wading in deeps where she has lain,
Sleeping upon her riven lawn
And chasing her starry satyr train.
She fled, and changed into a tree,
That lovely fair-haired lady...
And now I seek through
the sere summer
Where no trees are shady!'

Through gilded trellises
Of the heat, Dolores,
Inez, Manuccia,
Isabel, Lucia,
Mock Time that flies.
"Lovely bird, will you stay and sing,
Flirting your sheened wing,-
Peck with your beak, and cling
To our balconies?"
They flirt their fans, flaunting
"O silence enchanting
As music!" Then slanting
Their eyes,
Like gilded or emerald grapes,
They make mantillas, capes,
Hiding their simian shapes.
Sighes
Each lady, "Our spadille
Is done."...Dance the quadrille
from Hell's towers to Seville;
Surprise
Their siesta," Dolores
Said. Through gilded trellises
Of the heat, spangles
Pelt down through the tangles
Of bell flowers; each dangles
Her castanets, shutters
Fall while the heat mutters,
With sounds like a mandoline
Or tinkled tambourine...
Ladies, Time dies!

Old
  Sir
   Faulk,
  Tall as a stork,
Before the honeyed fruits of dawn
were ripe, would walk,
And stalk with a gun
The reynard-coloured sun,
Among the pheasant-feathered corn
the unicorn has torn, forlorn
 the
Smock-faced sheep
Sit
 and
  sleep;
Periwigged as William and Mary, weep...
"Sally, Mary, Mattie, what's the
matter, why cry?"
The huntsman and the reynard-
coloured sun and I sigh;
"Oh, the nursery-maid Meg
With a leg like a peg
Chased the feathered dreams like
hens, And when they laid an egg
In the sheepskin
Meadows
Where
The serene King James would steer
Horse and hounds, then he
From the shade of a tree
Picked it up as spoil to boil for
nursery tea", said the mourners.
In the
Corn, towers strain,
Feathered tall as a crane,
And whistling down the feathered
rain, Old Noah goes again -
An old dull mome
With a head like a pome,
Seeing the world as a bare egg,
Laid by the feathered air: Meg
Would beg three of these
For the nursery teas
Of Japhet, Shem and Ham,
she gave it
Underneath the trees,
Where the boiling
 Water,
  Hissed,
Like the goose-king's feathered
daughter-kissed,
Pot and pan and copper kettle
Put upon their proper mettle,
Lest the Flood - the Flood - The
Flood begin again through these!