What's O'Clock/Attitude Under an Elm Tree
ATTITUDE UNDER AN ELM TREE
Seeing that you pass your life playing upon the virginals
In an upper chamber with only a slit of a window in it,
I wonder why I,
Roaming the hills on a charger red as maple-leaves,
Should find the thought of you attractive.
You were veiled at the jousting, you remember,
Which enables me to imagine you without let or hindrance from the rigidness of fact;
A condition not unproductive of charm if viewed philosophically.
Besides, your window gives upon a walled garden,
Which I can by no means enter without dismounting from my maple-red charger,
And this I will not do,
Particularly as the garden belongs indubitably to your ancestors.
But I thank you for the spray of myrtle I have wound about my sleeve.
As it over-topped the wall,
My plucking it was without malice.
In an upper chamber with only a slit of a window in it,
I wonder why I,
Roaming the hills on a charger red as maple-leaves,
Should find the thought of you attractive.
You were veiled at the jousting, you remember,
Which enables me to imagine you without let or hindrance from the rigidness of fact;
A condition not unproductive of charm if viewed philosophically.
Besides, your window gives upon a walled garden,
Which I can by no means enter without dismounting from my maple-red charger,
And this I will not do,
Particularly as the garden belongs indubitably to your ancestors.
But I thank you for the spray of myrtle I have wound about my sleeve.
As it over-topped the wall,
My plucking it was without malice.