Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE FOREST OF CRECY, by PAUL FORT


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE FOREST OF CRECY, by                    
First Line: At a pace to reawake my dreaming fantasy, I started then, my mind
Last Line: For a sapphire, fare thee well, my forest of crecy!
Subject(s): Forests; Life; Love; Woods


At a pace to reawake my dreaming fantasy, I started then, my mind for new
adventures keen. They say 'tis full of game, the forest of Crecy, but only
flowers I saw and tunnels through the green -- sometimes the noiseless shots of
a tall service-tree -- 'neath vaulting shrubs whose fronds as lithe as fairies
showed, that the blue breeze which sifts the branches and the vines on either
side entwines with the whiteness of the road.

Was I alone? Not I, my Francis. With me went my fair one, plucking flowers, the
scarlet pimpernel especially, whose bloom adorns my dark lapel and always
breaks. One culls another. Singing gay one takes the road again. Ah, if I could
but say that morn how we had hearts at ease and minds content! From naught, from
everything, Francis, and from the breeze which, scourging here and there, o'er
its green empire ranged and from the kisses sweet we in the breeze exchanged.

The road is straight and white and long will last, 'twould seem. We should have
liked it well if it had never ended (a thousand years endured the Sleeping
Beauty's dream), if for us to the end of love, of life it had extended, or at
least till the death of day. O to see, beneath the bough, a hundred tunnels
green for a hundred rays unclose long tombs in that grave hour of sunset's
burning rose. This thing we did not see. How we regret it now!

What did we see? The squirrel flaunting his tail with glee. The nuthatch with
sharp beak drilling the linden-tree. Three baby rabbits steal from a wave of
marguerites. The antlered stag uprear that lordly head of his 'neath silver rays
to tear the veil of clematis. Such toadstools as might serve King Oberon for
seats. And 'neath acacia, beech and birch with silver sheen, hammocks of fern to
lull Titania the Queen. -- Alas, I lie: we saw no trace of all of this.

From the shady forest verge uprose the scent of mint, crushed by our careless
feet, so troubling and so strong, that my love with those green eyes where blue
reflections glint, making pretence to faint, poured all my arm along her warm
and agile waist, vine that my strife had torn. "A pheasant!" I exclaimed when
tired with too much pleasure. Pheasant? A bare-faced lie. -- ". . . Hark to the
distant horn. . . ." "No, 'tis the angelus chiming for noon, my treasure."

At the prick of noon the road, as at a signal given, turned, supple, and became
the white neck of a swan, within whose gaping beak a lucent sapphire shone,
offered, with gesture mild, to the wide azure heaven. In the midst of the oval
sapphire of the clearing (we had strayed for a full hour or more beneath the
forest shade) with myriad panes Mortcerf through calm air glittered bright, half
up a mountainside, all swathed in vapours light, where the hot sun of noon its
rainbow poured for me.

For a sapphire, fare thee well, my forest of Crecy!





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