Aflower

I daresay there were many among them, tied by their daily toil to the town, who thought with longing of the pleasant road before us, through fertile lands where all the orchards were aflower and the peasants were gathering the ripe barley, though April had yet some days to revel in.

The stars and the sun give thanks for the glory bestowed and beholden, For the gladness they give and rejoice in, the night and the dawn and the day: But nought they behold when the world is aflower and the season is golden Makes answer as meet and as sweet as the flower that itself is May. THE PASSING OF THE HAWTHORN The coming of the hawthorn brings on earth Heaven: all the spring speaks out in one sweet word, And heaven grows gladder, knowing that earth has heard.

It beat down upon Tokyo its fetid exhalations, the smell of cooking, of sewage and of humanity, and the queer sickly scent of a powerful evergreen tree aflower throughout the city, which resembled the reek of that Nagasaki brothel, and recalled the dancing of the Chonkina.