Turning down the lane, we heard a scuffle,
A trample, jostle, and snort.
They were crowded in the dusk before our cottage
To see were we their sort;

But they scared before our footsteps coming slowly,
Scattering past us up the lane,
The ragamuffin vagabonds of ponies,
Trotting hoof and flopping mane.

And by night, coming home across the common,
With the moon behind a cloud,
You would very nearly stumble on them grazing
Till they loomed and snorted loud,

Pretending they were gobbiluns or ghaisties,
Whereas, do you suppose
The apocalyptic horse in Revelations
Had a pushing velvet nose?

There were pigs that routed mast beneath the oak-trees,
There were birds to trill and call,
There were pleasant dogs, but still I think the ponies
Were the best beasts of all;

And I wish that I were strolling with my ashplant
To our cottage down the lane,
And I wish that you were there to cast your glamour
Over books and tea again;

And I wish that it was dusk and we were homing,
Turning off beside the pond,
Almost laughing once again to hear them snorting
In the dusk down beyond

Where they huddled thrusting heads across the wicket
Of our cottage, to report
To the rabbits and the badgers in the Forest
Whether we were of their sort.

I

I see the boys of summer in their ruin 
Lay the gold tithings barren,
Setting no store by harvest, freeze the soils;
There in their heat the winter floods
Of frozen loves they fetch their girls,
And drown the cargoed apples in their tides.

These boys of light are curdlers in their folly,
Sour the boiling honey;
The jacks of frost they finger in the hives;
There in the sun the frigid threads
Of doubt and dark they feed their nerves;
The signal moon is zero in their voids.

I see the summer children in their mothers
Split up the brawned womb’s weathers,
Divide the night and day with fairy thumbs;
There in the deep with quartered shades
Of sun and moon they paint their dams
As sunlight paints the shelling of their heads.

I see that from these boys shall men of nothing
Stature by seedy shifting,
Or lame the air with leaping from its heats;
There from their hearts the dogdayed pulse
Of love and light bursts in their throats.
O see the pulse of summer in the ice.

II

But seasons must be challenged or they totter
Into a chiming quarter
Where, punctual as death, we ring the stars;
There, in his night, the black-tongued bells
The sleepy man of winter pulls,
Nor blows back moon-and-midnight as she blows.

We are the dark deniers, let us summon
Death from a summer woman,
A muscling life from lovers in their cramp,
From the fair dead who flush the sea
The bright-eyed worm on Davy’s lamp,
And from the planted womb the man of straw.

We summer boys in this four-winded spinning,
Green of the seaweeds’ iron,
Hold up the noisy sea and drop her birds,
Pick the world’s ball of wave and froth
To choke the deserts with her tides,
And comb the county gardens for a wreath.

In spring we cross our foreheads with the holly,
Heigh ho the blood and berry,
And nail the merry squires to the trees;
Here love’s damp muscle dries and dies,
Here break a kiss in no love’s quarry.
O see the poles of promise in the boys.

Ill

I see you boys of summer in your ruin.
Man in his maggot’s barren.
And boys are full and foreign in the pouch.
I am the man your father was.
We are the sons of flint and pitch.
O see the poles are kissing as they cross.