Flowers and Gardens

Glowing is her Bonnet

72

Glowing is her Bonnet,
Glowing is her Cheek,
Glowing is her Kirtle,
Yet she cannot speak.

Better as the Daisy
From the Summer hill
Vanish unrecorded
Save by tearful rill-

Save by loving sunrise
Looking for her face.
Save by feet unnumbered
Pausing at the place.

Flowers—Well—if anybody

137

Flowers—Well—if anybody
Can the ecstasy define—
Half a transport—half a trouble—
With which flowers humble men:
Anybody find the fountain
From which floods so contra flow—
I will give him all the Daisies
Which upon the hillside blow.


Too much pathos in their faces
For a simple breast like mine—
Butterflies from St. Domingo
Cruising round the purple line—
Have a system of aesthetics—
Far superior to mine.

All these my banners be

22

All these my banners be.
I sow my pageantry
In May-
It rises train by train-
Then sleeps in state again-
My chancel-all the plain

Today.

To lose-if one can find again-
To miss-if one shall meet-
The Burglar cannot rob-then-
The Broker cannot cheat.
So build the hillocks gaily
Thou little spade of mine
Leaving nooks for Daisy
And for Columbine-
You and I the secret
Of the Crocus know-
Let us chant it softly"
There is no more snow!"

To him who keeps an Orchis' heart-
The swamps are pink with June.

A Route of Evanescence

A Route of Evanescence
With a revolving Wheel--
A Resonance of Emerald--
A Rush of Cochineal--
And every Blossom on the Bush
Adjusts its tumbled Head--
The mail from Tunis, probably,
An easy Morning's Ride--

A Lady red-amid the Hill

74

A Lady red-amid the Hill
Her annual secret keeps!
A Lady white, within the Field
In placid Lily sleeps!


The tidy Breezes, with their Brooms-
Sweep vale-and hill-and tree!
Prithee, My pretty Housewives!
Who may expected be?


The Neighbors do not yet suspect!
The Woods exchange a smile!
Orchard, and Buttercup, and Bird-
In such a little while!


And yet, how still the Landscape stands!
How nonchalant the Hedge!
As if the "Resurrection"
Were nothing very strange!

Sonnet XLIV: Belovèd, Thou Hast Brought Me

Belovèd, thou hast brought me many flowers
Plucked in the garden, all the summer through
And winter, and it seemed as if they grew
In this close room, nor missed the sun and showers.
So, in the like name of that love of ours,
Take back these thoughts which here unfolded too,
And which on warm and cold days I withdrew
From my heart's ground. Indeed, those bed and bowers
Be overgrown with bitter weeds and rue,
And wait thy weeding; yet here's eglantine,
Here's ivy!--take them, as I used to do
Thy flowers, and keep them where they shall not pine.
Instruct thine eyes to keep their colours true,
And tell thy soul, their roots are left in mine.

Where Innocent Bright-Eyed Daisies Are

Where innocent bright-eyed daisies are,
With blades of grass between,
Each daisy stands up like a star
Out of a sky of green.

Twist Me A Crown Of Wind-Flowers

Twist me a crown of wind-flowers;
That I may fly away
To hear the singers at their song,
And players at their play.
Put on your crown of wind-flowers:
But whither would you go?
Beyond the surging of the sea
And the storms that blow.
Alas! your crown of wind-flowers
Can never make you fly:
I twist them in a crown to-day,
And to-night they die.

There Is But One May In The Year,

There is but one May in the year,
And sometimes May is wet and cold;
There is but one May in the year
Before the year grows old.
Yet though it be the chilliest May,
With least of sun and most of showers,
Its wind and dew, its night and day,
Bring up the flowers.

The Lily Has A Smooth Stalk

The lily has a smooth stalk,
Will never hurt your hand;
But the rose upon her briar
Is lady of the land.
There's sweetness in an apple tree,
And profit in the corn;
But lady of all beauty
Is a rose upon a thorn.
When with moss and honey
She tips her bending briar,
And half unfolds her glowing heart,
She sets the world on fire.

Roses Blushing Red And White

Roses blushing red and white,
For delight;
Honeysuckle wreaths above,
For love;
Dim sweet-scented heliotrope,
For hope;
Shining lilies tall and straight,
For royal state;
Dusky pansies, let them be
For memory;
With violets of fragrant breath,
For death.

In The Meadow - What In The Meadow?

In the meadow - what in the meadow?
Bluebells, buttercups, meadowsweet,
And fairy rings for the children's feet
In the meadow.
In the garden - what in the garden?
Jacob's-ladder and Solomon's-seal,
And Love-lies-bleeding beside All-heal
In the garden.

If Stars Dropped Out Of Heaven

If stars dropped out of heaven,
And if flowers took their place,
The sky would still look very fair,
And fair earth's face.
Winged angels might fly down to us
To pluck the stars,
Be we could only long for flowers
Beyond the cloudy bars.

Brownie, Brownie, Let Down Your Milk

Brownie, Brownie, let down your milk
White as swansdown and smooth as silk,
Fresh as dew and pure as snow:
For I know where the cowslips blow,
And you shall have a cowslip wreath
No sweeter scented than your breath.

A Summer Wish

Live all thy sweet life through,
Sweet Rose, dew-sprent,
Drop down thine evening dew
To gather it anew
When day is bright:
I fancy thou wast meant
Chiefly to give delight.


Sing in the silent sky,
Glad soaring bird;
Sing out thy notes on high
To sunbeam straying by
Or passing cloud;
Heedless if thou art heard
Sing thy full song aloud.


Oh that it were with me
As with the flower;
Blooming on its own tree
For butterfly and bee
Its summer morns:
That I might bloom mine hour
A rose in spite of thorns.


Oh that my work were done
As birds' that soar
Rejoicing in the sun:
That when my time is run
And daylight too,
I so might rest once more
Cool with refreshing dew.

Evening Harmony
The hour has come at last when, trembling to and fro,
Each flower is a censer sifting its perfume;
The scent and sounds all swirl in evening’s gentle fume;
A melancholy waltz, a languid vertigo!
Each flower is a censer sifting its perfume;
A violin’s vibrato wounds the heart of woe;
A melancholy waltz, a languid vertigo!
The sky, a lofty altar, lovely in the gloom,
A violin’s vibrato wounds the heart of woe,
A tender heart detests the black of nullity,
The sky, a lofty altar, lovely in the gloom;
The sun is drowning in the evening’s blood-red glow.
A tender heart detests the black of nullity,
And lovingly preserves each trace of long ago!
The sun is drowning in the evening’s blood-red glow …
Your memory shines through me like an ostensory!

Follies


Shaken,
The blossoms of lilac,
And shattered,
The atoms of purple.
Green dip the leaves,
Darker the bark,
Longer the shadows.


Sheer lines of poplar
Shimmer with masses of silver
And down in a garden old with years
And broken walls of ruin and story,
Roses rise with red rain-memories.
May!
In the open world
The sun comes and finds your face,
Remembering all.

What One Says To The Poet On The Subject Of Flowers

I

Thus, ever, towards the azure night
Where there quivers a topaz sea,
Will function in your evening light
The Lilies, those clysters of ecstasy!

In our own age of sago, as they must,
Since all the Plants are workers first,
The Lilies will drink a blue disgust,
From your religious Prose, not verse!

– The Lily of Monsieur de Kerdrel
The sonnet of eighteen thirty, the plant,
That Lily, they bestow on ‘The Minstrel’
With the carnation and the amaranth!
Lilies! Lilies! You see never a one!
Yet in your Verses, like the Sinners’
Sleeves, those of soft-footed women,
Always those white flowers shiver!


Always, Dear, when you take a bathe,
Your Shirt with yellow armpits rots
Swells to the breeze of rising day,
Above the soiled forget-me-nots!


Love, only, through your nets
Smuggles Lilies – O unequal!
And the Woodland Violets,
The dark Nymphs’ sugary spittle!...


II


O Poets, if you could but own
To the red on the laurel’s firm stem
To the Roses, the Roses, blown,
With a thousand octaves swollen!


If BANVILLE could make them snow,
Blood-stained, whirling in gyrations,
Blacking the eye of that stranger so,
Who sees wicked interpretations!


In your forests, by your paths,
O so placid photographers!
Like the stoppers on carafes,
The Flora’s more or less diverse!


Always the vegetables, French,
Absurd, consumptive, up for a fight,



Bellies of basset hounds they drench,
Peacefully passed in evening light;


Always, after fearful drawings
Of blue Lotus or that Sunflower,
Pink prints, subjects befitting
Girls in communion’s sweet hour!


The Asoka Ode agrees with the
Loretto window stanza; showers
Of bright butterflies, heavy, flutter,
Dunging on the daisy flowers.


Old verdures, old braided ribbons!
O vegetable biscuit bakes!
Fantastic flowers of old Salons!


– For cockchafers, not rattlesnakes,
Those vegetable dolls in tears
Grandville would have mislaid
In the margin, sucking colours
From spiteful stars with eye-shades!

Yes, the drooling of your flutes
Produces precious sugar!

– Heaps of fried eggs in old boots,
Lily, Lilac, Rose, Asoka!...
III

O white Hunter, running through,
Stocking-less, the Panic field,
Shouldn’t you, couldn’t you
Acquire a little botany?

You’d have succeed, I’m afraid,
To russet Crickets, Spanish Fly,
Rio golds to Rhine blue, Norway
To Florida, in the blink of an eye:

But, Dear, art cannot, for us,

– It’s true – permit, it’s wrong,
To the astounding Eucalyptus,
Boa-Constrictors, hexameter-long;
There…! As if Mahogany
Served, even in our Guiana,
Only the Capuchin monkey
To ride the mad weight of liana!


– In short, a single Flower: is it,

Lily or Rosemary, live or dead,
Worth a spot of sea-gull’s shit,
Worth a candle drip, I said?

– And I mean what I say, mind!
Even you, squatting there, in one
Of those bamboo-huts – blind
Shut, behind brown Persian curtain –
You’d scrawl about things floral
Worthy of some wild Oise department!...


– Poet, yet that’s a rationale
No less laughable than it’s arrogant!
IV


Speak, not of pampas in the spring,
Black with terrible rebellions,
But of tobacco, cotton growing!
Speak of exotic harvest seasons!


Speak, white brow that Phoebus tanned,
Of how many dollars Pedro
Velasquez of Havana earned;
En-shit the Bay of Sorrento


Where in thousands rest the Swans;
Let your stanzas undertake
The draining of the mangrove swamps,
Filled with hydras, water-snakes!


Your quatrains plunge in blood-wet groves
Return, bringing Humanity
Diverse offerings, sugars, cloves,
Lozenges and rubber-trees!


Let us know if the yellowness
Of snowy Peaks, near the Tropic,
Is prolific insect’s nests
Or lichens microscopic!


Seek, O Hunter, our wish what’s more,
Diverse fragrant madders,
That, for our Army, Nature
Might cause to bloom in trousers!


Seek, beside the slumbering Glades,
Flowers that look like muzzles, oh,
Out of which drip gold pomades,
On the dark hide of the buffalo!



Seek wild fields, where in the Blue
Trembles the silver of pubescence,
Calyxes of fiery eggs that brew
Steeped in burning oily essence!


Seek the Thistle’s cotton-bin,
Whose downy wool ten asses
With ember eyes toil to spin!
Seek flowers which are chassis!


Yes, seek at the heart of black seams
Nigh-on stone-like flowers – marvels! –
That near their hard pale ovaries
Bear soft gemmiferous tonsils!


Serve us, O Crammer, as you can,
On a fine vermilion platter
Stews of syrupy Lilies, plan
To corrode our German silver!


V


Many will sing of Love sublime,
The thief of sombre Indulgence:
Not Renan, nor Murr the cat, I’m
Sure, know Thyrsi, blue, immense!


You’ll quicken, in our torpors,
Hysterias, through your fragrances;
Exalt us towards candours
Purer than Marys’ whitenesses…


Colonist! Trader! Medium!
Your Rhyme, pink, white, will be
A welling ray of sodium,
A well-tapped dripping rubber-tree!


From your dark Poems – Juggler!
Let dioptric white, green, red,
Burst out like strange flowers,
Electric butterflies instead!


See! It’s the Century of hell!
Telegraph poles will honour


– A lyre, where steel songs swell,
Your magnificent shoulder!
Rhyme us above all a version
On the ills of potato blight!

– And to aid the composition
Of Poems of mysterious light

To be read from Tréguier
To Paramaribo, don’t forget
To buy Tomes by Monsieur Figuier,

– Illustrated – from Monsieur Hachette!

The Flower

Once in a golden hour
I cast to earth a seed.
Up there came a flower,
The people said, a weed.

To and fro they went
Thro' my garden bower,
And muttering discontent
Cursed me and my flower.

Then it grew so tall

It wore a crown of light,
But thieves from o'er the wall
Stole the seed by night.


Sow'd it far and wide
By every town and tower,
Till all the people cried,
"Splendid is the flower!"

Read my little fable:
He that runs may read.
Most can raise the flowers now,
For all have got the seed.

And some are pretty enough,
And some are poor indeed;
And now again the people
Call it but a weed.

Summer


See what delights in sylvan scenes appear!
Descending Gods have found Elysium here.
In woods bright Venus with Adonis stray'd,
And chaste Diana haunts the forest shade.
Come lovely nymph, and bless the silent hours,
When swains from shearing seek their nightly bow'rs;
When weary reapers quit the sultry field,
And crown'd with corn, their thanks to Ceres yield.
This harmless grove no lurking viper hides,
But in my breast the serpent Love abides.
Here bees from blossoms sip the rosy dew,
But your Alexis knows no sweets but you.
Oh deign to visit our forsaken seats,
The mossy fountains, and the green retreats!
Where-e'er you walk, cool gales shall fan the glade,
Trees, where you sit, shall crowd into a shade,
Where-e'er you tread, the blushing flow'rs shall rise,
And all things flourish where you turn your eyes.
Oh! How I long with you to pass my days,
Invoke the muses, and resound your praise;
Your praise the birds shall chant in ev'ry grove,
And winds shall waft it to the pow'rs above.
But wou'd you sing, and rival Orpheus' strain,
The wond'ring forests soon shou'd dance again,
The moving mountains hear the pow'rful call,
And headlong streams hang list'ning in their fall!
But see, the shepherds shun the noon-day heat,
The lowing herds to murm'ring brooks retreat,
To closer shades the panting flocks remove,
Ye Gods! And is there no relief for Love?
But soon the sun with milder rays descends
To the cool ocean, where his journey ends;
On me Love's fiercer flames for ever prey,
By night he scorches, as he burns by day.

In Imitation of Cowley : The Garden

Fain would my Muse the flow'ry Treasures sing,
And humble glories of the youthful Spring;
Where opening Roses breathing sweets diffuse,
And soft Carnations show'r their balmy dews;
Where Lilies smile in virgin robes of white,
The thin Undress of superficial Light,
And vary'd Tulips show so dazzling gay,
Blushing in bright diversities of day.
Each painted flow'ret in the lake below
Surveys its beauties, whence its beauties grow;
And pale Narcissus on the bank, in vain
Transformed, gazes on himself again.
Here aged trees Cathedral Walks compose,
And mount the Hill in venerable rows:
There the green Infants in their beds are laid,
The Garden's Hope, and its expected shade.
Here Orange-trees with blooms and pendantis shine,
And vernal honours to their autumn join;
Exceed their promise in the ripen'd store,
Yet in the rising blossom promise more.
There in bright drops the crystal Fountains play,
By Laurels shielded from the piercing day;
Where Daphne, now a tree as once a maid,
Still from Apollo vindicates her shade,
Still turns her Beauties from th' invading beam,
Nor seeks in vain for succour to the Stream.
The stream at once preserves her virgin leaves,
At once a shelter from her boughs receives,
Where Summer's beauty midst of Winter stays,
And Winter's Coolness spite of Summer's rays.