Beneath our feet we heard the soaring larks;

The sunlight had the hum of winnowed chaff,

And the blue wind was sown with tingling sparks,

That blew my hat away to make you laugh.

Over the land it sailed, collecting height,

Flapped in the face of each offended crow,

And scared the speckled falcon of the Baux,

Adventurously taunting it to fight.

Like Saturn’s in its whirling shady brim,

Far down, its giant shadow coursed the plain—

Never did autogyre so lively skim

As did the flying discus of my brain;

And though my skull, a mile or so behind,

Left to the cold phrenologizing wind,

Shone bald and egg-like in the noonday sun—

This fantasy was left to hatch alone,

A sudden brainwave, breaching through the bone,

That for a breathless minute made us one

With that unsated wish in us, that lives

Out of this merely positive degree

In the wide region of superlatives,

Translating every rash hyperbole

We utter, into life and action there;

Out of our foibles founding pyramids;

And friezing dizzy Parthenons of air

With deeds that our heredity forbids.