Now touch the air softly, /Step gently, One, two.../I'll love you till roses are robin's-egg blue; /I'll love you till gravel/Is eaten for bread, /And lemons are orange, /And lavender's red. So begins A Pavane for the Nursery, one of William Jay Smith's most celebrated and charming love poems. Collected here for the first time are this and many more of Smith's enchanting paeans to love, a bevy of bewitched words of the sort no loved one could ever hear enough. Whether committed to a delighted reader's memor recited out loud at a romantic wedding, or set to music by a love-struck composer , the poems in this intimate book, illustrated by the late Ukrainian woodcut master Jacques Hnizdovsky, bespeak love in a variety of forms. Also included are striking translations of such poets as Frederico Garcia Lorca and Jacques Prevert.
Now touch the air softly, /Step gently, One, two.../I'll love you till roses are robin's-egg blue; /I'll love you till gravel/Is eaten for bread, /And lemons are orange, /And lavender's red. So begins A Pavane for the Nursery, one of William Jay Smith's most celebrated and charming love poems. Collected here for the first time are this and many more of Smith's enchanting paeans to love, a bevy of bewitched words of the sort no loved one could ever hear enough. Whether committed to a delighted reader's memor recited out loud at a romantic wedding, or set to music by a love-struck composer , the poems in this intimate book, illustrated by the late Ukrainian woodcut master Jacques Hnizdovsky, bespeak love in a variety of forms. Also included are striking translations of such poets as Frederico Garcia Lorca and Jacques Prevert.