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 hour-glass.

Deep in the sun-searched growths the dragon-fly
Hangs like a blue thread loosened from the sky: -
     So this wing'd hour is dropt 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.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-82)