Читать книгу Hazards - Wilfrid Wilson Gibson - Страница 4

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Someone had set a bowl of peonies

On the white table where they caught the light:

And as he roused from slumber, more at ease,

Their dewy crimson flashed upon his sight.

Lying in languor on his snowy bed,

Islanded in that vast austere white room,

The little crystal bowl of living red

Brimmed his age-wasted heart with summer-bloom:

And, drowsing now, his body seemed to glow

Again with raptures of long-spent desires ...

Peonies bursting from deep drifts of snow,

Flame upon flame, flashed their exuberant fires

Through his closed eyelids: bloom on burning bloom

Blazed his starved senses to an ecstasy

Of clear red life, until the unseen room

Burned all about him, one vast peony—

One flower of fire! Nay, but the very world,

Petal on petal, flushed to sheer blood-red,

A globe of living flame about him furled,

Within whose furnace-heart he now lay dead!