The Half-Mown Meadow

I walked in a half-mown flowering meadow by the sea's-
Edge of the grass, where yesterday the mower went.
Bloomy and purple as clover were the fog-grass and bent;
The field so wide, it broke on misty boundaries.

The stubble and mown hay were fresh like tidal sand
When at low tide I walked by that standing lake-waved sea;
The surface of the grass wore such fluidity,
Melting of plane in plane, as seemed unknown on land.

Our eyes rest on the sea like gulls and find a home
In that infinity. My eyes would not be called
By the small flags of ash-trees in the hedge, or belled
Flocking of children, from the sea where they had come,

Whose sky-reflecting waves, mantled with darkness under,
In waves' compulsive ways bred form on form of light;
Whose currents far from land carried fordone my sight;
All colour at the full as in a time of thunder.