Silent Noon

Your hands lie open in the long, fresh grass,

The finger points look through like rosy blooms;

Your eyes smile peace.  The pasture gleams and glooms

'Neath billowing skies that scatter and amass.

All round our nest, far as the eye can pass,

Are golden kingcup fields with silver edge

Where the cow parsley skirts the hawthorn hedge.

'Tis visible silence, still as the hourglass.

Deep in the sun-searched growths the dragonfly

Hangs like a blue thread loosened from the sky --

So this winged hour is dropped to us from above.

Oh! Clasp we to our hearts, for deathless dower,

This close-companioned inarticulate hour

When twofold silence was the song of love.

by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882)