| |
| O THAT I were lying under the olives, | |
| Lying alone among the anemones! | |
| Shell-colour’d blossoms they bloom there and scarlet, | |
| Far under stretches of silver woodland, | |
| Flame in the delicate shade of the olives. | 5 |
| |
| O that I were lying under the olives! | |
| Grey grows the thyme on the shadowless headland, | |
| The long low headland, where white in the sunshine | |
| The rocks run seaward. It seems suspended | |
| Lone in an infinite gulf of azure. | 10 |
| |
| There, were I lying under the olives, | |
| Might I behold come following seaward, | |
| Clear brown shapes in a world of sunshine, | |
| A russet shepherd, his sheep too, russet. | |
| Watch them wander the long grey headland | 15 |
| Out to the edge of the burning azure. | |
| |
| O that I were lying under the olives! | |
| So should I see the far-off cities | |
| Glittering low by the purple water, | |
| Gleaming high on the purple mountain; | 20 |
| See where the road goes winding southward. | |
| It passes the valleys of almond blossom, | |
| Curves round the crag o’er the steep-hanging orchards, | |
| Where almond and peach are aflush ’mid the olives— | |
| Hardly the amethyst sea shines through them— | 25 |
| Over it cypress on solemn cypress | |
| Lead to the lonely pilgrimage places. | |
| |
| O that I were dreaming under the olives | |
| Hearing alone on the sun-steeped headland | |
| A crystalline wave, almost inaudible, | 30 |
| Steal round the shore; and thin, far off, | |
| The shepherd’s music! So did it sound | |
| In fields Sicilian: Theocritus heard it, | |
| Moschus and Bion piped it at noontide. | |
| |
| O that I were listening under the olives! | 35 |
| So should I hear behind in the woodland | |
| The peasants talking. Either a woman, | |
| A wrinkled grandame, stands in the sunshine, | |
| Stirs the brown soil in an acre of violets— | |
| Large odorous violets—and answers slowly | 40 |
| A child’s swift babble; or else at noon | |
| The labourers come. They rest in the shadow, | |
| Eating their dinner of herbs, and are merry. | |
| |
| Soft speech Provençal under the olives! | |
| Like a queen’s raiment from days long perish’d, | 45 |
| Breathing aromas of old unremember’d | |
| Perfumes and shining in dust-cover’d places | |
| With sudden hints of forgotten splendour— | |
| So on the lips of the peasant his language, | |
| His only now, the tongue of the peasant. | 50 |
| |
| Would I were listening under the olives! | |
| So should I see in an airy pageant | |
| A proud chivalrous pomp sweep by me; | |
| Hear in high courts the joyous ladies | |
| Devising of Love in a world of lovers; | 55 |
| Hear the song of the Lion-hearted, | |
| A deep-voiced song—and oh! perchance, | |
| Ghostly and strange and sweet to madness, | |
| Rudel sing the Lady of Tripoli. | |
| |
