The Pea Fields

THESE are the fields of light, and laughing air,
And yellow butterflies, and foraging bees,
And whitish wayward blossoms winged as these,
And pale green tangles like a sea-maid’s hair.
Pale, pale the blue, but pure beyond compare,
And pale the sparkle of the far-off seas
A-shimmer like these fluttering slopes of peas,
And pale the open landscape everywhere.

From fence to fence a perfumed breath exhales
O’er the bright pallor of the well-loved fields,—
My fields of Tantrumar in summer time;
And scorning the poor feed their pasture yields,
Up from the bushy lots the cattle climb,
To gaze with longing through the gray-mossed rails.