Читать книгу Weeds by the Wall: Verses - Cawein Madison Julius - Страница 5

Dusk is thy dawn; when Eve puts on her state

Of gold and purple in the marbled west,

Thou comest forth like some embodied trait,

Or dim conceit, a lily-bud confessed;

Or, of a rose, the visible wish; that, white,

Goes softly messengering through the night,

Whom each expectant flower makes its guest.

All day the primroses have thought of thee,

Their golden heads close-haremed from the heat;

All day the mystic moonflowers silkenly

Veiled snowy faces, – that no bee might greet

Or butterfly that, weighed with pollen, passed; —

Keeping Sultana charms for thee, at last,

Their lord, who comest to salute each sweet.

Cool-throated flowers that avoid the day's

Too fervid kisses; every bud that drinks

The tipsy dew and to the starlight plays

Nocturnes of fragrance, thy winged shadow links

In bonds of secret brotherhood and faith;

O bearer of their order's shibboleth,

Like some pale symbol fluttering o'er these pinks.

What dost thou whisper in the balsam's ear

That sets it blushing, or the hollyhock's, —

A syllabled silence that no man may hear, —

As dreamily upon its stem it rocks?

What spell dost bear from listening plant to plant,

Like some white witch, some ghostly ministrant,

Some spectre of some perished flower of phlox?

O voyager of that universe which lies

Between the four walls of this garden fair, —

Whose constellations are the fireflies

That wheel their instant courses everywhere, —

'Mid fairy firmaments wherein one sees

Mimic Boötes and the Pleiades,

Thou steerest like some fairy ship-of-air.

Gnome-wrought of moonbeam fluff and gossamer,

Silent as scent, perhaps thou chariotest

Mab or king Oberon; or, haply, her

His queen, Titania, on some midnight quest. —

O for the herb, the magic euphrasy,

That should unmask thee to mine eyes, ah, me!

And all that world at which my soul hath guessed!