Читать книгу Poems - Cawein Madison Julius - Страница 26

  Dusk is thy dawn; when Eve puts on its 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 wing'd 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 them 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 specter 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 faery firmaments wherein one sees

  Mimic Boötes and the Pleiades,

    Thou steerest like some faery 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.—

  Oh 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!