Poem by Ina Donna Coolbrith

Summons

LONG, swinging bells of pomegranate!
O orange-buds, falling as snow!
O singing of lark and of linnet —
Singing high in the leaves, singing low —
Can you sing to my heart, can you win it
One moment to these, ere I go?

What flowers shall be sweeter than these are?
What sky shall be blue as this sky?
As a fair, fringed girdle the trees are,
About the green place where I lie;
And the swarms of the brown honey-bees are
As clouds over clover and rye.

But ah! for the singing of swallows
What thought, though the singing he sweet!
What ease, though the grass of the hollows
And hills be as down to my feet!
Love beckons, the ready heart follows,
How fleet to the summons, how fleet!

And unto the dove, as she cooeth,
It's O, for the wings of the dove! —
And unto the wind, as it bloweth,
For the pinions and fleetness thereof —
That the feet unto where the heart goeth
May be swift, may be swift, to my love!

1. At the Dawn
2. Rose and Thistle
3. My “Cloth of Gold”
4. All
5. After the Winter Rain

Louis Untermeyer Summons ("THE eager night and the impetuous winds")

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