Poems (Spofford)/A Flower Piece
A FLOWER PIECE.
Wandering of late beside a northern shore
That longed for summer, and the wild beach grass,
And dip of oar, and plash of pearly feet,
And happy laughter on its lonely sands,
I heard a young voice caroling some song,
Nor knew I was in elf-land while I heard.
It sang, and slowly trembled into rest—
Slowly, because the earth was loth to leave
The high melodious dalliance.
The high melodious dalliance.But before
The singing fled to silence, eagerly
A rustle and a rush of flying wings,
Like leaflets blown before a frosty blast
When woods stand shivering, caught and bore it off,
Lost in the airy clamor of their flight.
And, as they went, wild music followed them;
The tune the breeze winds in and out the grass,
The tune to which the clouds and sunshine play
O'er slopes of blushing clover—faint at first,
With many a fluttered echo frolicking,
It fell its windy way—then loitered down,
With lingering cadence of a long delay,
Lightly as in the tenderest deeps of even
The yellow blossom of the new moon drops
Below the west that waits it.
Below the west that waits it.'Twas the voice
Of all the elves of all the flowers that blow,
Flocking to find the Spring, who slumbered yet,
Nursed by the blue-eyed April. Willow plumes,
Harebell, and cowslip, and anemone;
The silver cinquefoil, and the columbine
That bursts, a lance of hoarded light, from earth,
And swings its red flame on the shining tip;
The purple vetches, washed by salt sea sprays;
The frail convolvulus, that, ere the year
Is at the flood, leagues with the building bird,
And the rude way-side tangles o'er her nest.
Precious to plot and pleachéd alley, too,
The mimic nun of the snow-drop, and the friar
Dwelling within the hooded aconite;
The maidens of the pale chrysanthemum,
The royal lady of the proud and fair
Japonica, and ev'n the merry mites'
That balance on the trumpet-flower's edge,
Tippling their horns of honey. And with them,
All the delightsome things of old romance—
The royal violet, and Sappho's rose;
The fleur-de-lis, the flower of chivalry;
The lotus, born of the eternities,
Holding immortal ichor—hovered there,
Hovered a moment, chiming in one strain,
Then falling, failing, ever on the wing,
Sought other skies.
Sought other skies.And I, upon the shore,
Watched a far bark into a bank of mist,
A dim blue bank built up along the sea;
The bark still sailing, hull and tapering spire
A line of light, silverly sheathed about
With deepening vapors, slowly gliding on
To denser shadow, slow and ever slower,
Fainting and fading, till a phantom craft
Was hid in sad recesses of the cloud,
A vanished apparition—and above,
Upon the pallor of a peaceful sky,
Fair Hesper, like a flower, bloomed out heaven.
That longed for summer, and the wild beach grass,
And dip of oar, and plash of pearly feet,
And happy laughter on its lonely sands,
I heard a young voice caroling some song,
Nor knew I was in elf-land while I heard.
It sang, and slowly trembled into rest—
Slowly, because the earth was loth to leave
The high melodious dalliance.
The high melodious dalliance.But before
The singing fled to silence, eagerly
A rustle and a rush of flying wings,
Like leaflets blown before a frosty blast
When woods stand shivering, caught and bore it off,
Lost in the airy clamor of their flight.
And, as they went, wild music followed them;
The tune the breeze winds in and out the grass,
The tune to which the clouds and sunshine play
O'er slopes of blushing clover—faint at first,
With many a fluttered echo frolicking,
It fell its windy way—then loitered down,
With lingering cadence of a long delay,
Lightly as in the tenderest deeps of even
The yellow blossom of the new moon drops
Below the west that waits it.
Below the west that waits it.'Twas the voice
Of all the elves of all the flowers that blow,
Flocking to find the Spring, who slumbered yet,
Nursed by the blue-eyed April. Willow plumes,
Harebell, and cowslip, and anemone;
The silver cinquefoil, and the columbine
That bursts, a lance of hoarded light, from earth,
And swings its red flame on the shining tip;
The purple vetches, washed by salt sea sprays;
The frail convolvulus, that, ere the year
Is at the flood, leagues with the building bird,
And the rude way-side tangles o'er her nest.
Precious to plot and pleachéd alley, too,
The mimic nun of the snow-drop, and the friar
Dwelling within the hooded aconite;
The maidens of the pale chrysanthemum,
The royal lady of the proud and fair
Japonica, and ev'n the merry mites'
That balance on the trumpet-flower's edge,
Tippling their horns of honey. And with them,
All the delightsome things of old romance—
The royal violet, and Sappho's rose;
The fleur-de-lis, the flower of chivalry;
The lotus, born of the eternities,
Holding immortal ichor—hovered there,
Hovered a moment, chiming in one strain,
Then falling, failing, ever on the wing,
Sought other skies.
Sought other skies.And I, upon the shore,
Watched a far bark into a bank of mist,
A dim blue bank built up along the sea;
The bark still sailing, hull and tapering spire
A line of light, silverly sheathed about
With deepening vapors, slowly gliding on
To denser shadow, slow and ever slower,
Fainting and fading, till a phantom craft
Was hid in sad recesses of the cloud,
A vanished apparition—and above,
Upon the pallor of a peaceful sky,
Fair Hesper, like a flower, bloomed out heaven.