Classic Poem

You promised to send me some violets. Did you forget?
White ones and blue ones from under the orchard hedge?
Sweet dark purple, and white ones mixed for a pledge
Of our early love that hardly has opened yet.

Here there's an almond-tree — you have never seen
Such a one in the north — it flowers on the street, and I stan
Every day by the fence to look up at the flowers that expan
At rest in the blue, and wonder at what they mean.

Under the almond-tree, the happy lands
Provence, Japan, and Italy repose;
And passing feet are chatter and clapping of those
Who play around us, country girls clapping their hands.

You, my love, the foremost, in a flowered gown,
All your unbearable tenderness, you with the laughter
Standed upon your eyes now so wide with hereafter,
You with loose hands of abandonment hanging down.