Reading a Letter

From New Poems (1916).

She sits on the recreation ground
Under an oak whose yellow buds dot the pale blue sky.
The young grass twinkles in the wind, and the sound
Of the wind in the knotted buds in a canopy.

So sitting under the knotted canopy
Of the wind, she is lifted and carried away as in a balloon
Across the insensible void, till she stoops to see
The sandy desert beneath her, the dreary platoon.

She knows the waste all dry beneath her, in one place
Stirring with earth-coloured life, ever turning and stirring.
But never the motion has a human face
Nor sound, save intermittent machinery whirring.

And so again, on the recreation ground
She alights a stranger, wondering, unused to the scene;
Suffering at sight of the children playing around,
Hurt at the chalk-coloured tulips, and the evening-green.