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Blooms of the Berry

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Год написания книги
2017
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Chilly dies the violet dapple
In its earthly hall.

II

March is but a blust'ring liar,
April a sad love,
May a milkmaid from the byre
Flirting in the grove.
June is rich in many blossoms,
She's the one I'll woo;
Health swells in her sunny bosoms,
She's my sweetheart true.

THE JESSAMINE AND THE MORNING-GLORY

I

On a sheet of silver the morning-star lay
Fresh, white as a baby child,
And laughed and leaped in his lissome way,
On my parterre of flowers smiled.
For a morning-glory's spiral bud
Of shell-coned tallness slim
Stood ready to burst her delicate hood
And bloom on the dawning dim:
A princess royal in purple born
To beauty and pride in the balmy morn.

II

And she shook her locks at the morning-star
And her raiment scattered wide;
Low laughed at a hollyhock's scimetar,
Its jewels of buds to deride.
The pomegranate near, with fingers of flame,
The hot-faced geraniums nigh,
Their proud heads bowed to the queenly dame
For they knew her state was high:
The fuchsia like a bead of blood
Bashfully blushed in her silvery hood.

III

All wit that this child of the morning light
Was queen of the morn and them,
That the orient star in his beams of white
Was her prince in a diadem;
For lavish he showered those pearls that flash
And cluster the front of her smock;
From his lordly fingers of rays did dash
Down zephyrs her crib to rock.
But a jessamine pale 'neath the arbor grew,
Meek, selfless, and sweet, and a virgin true.

IV

But the morning-glory disdained her birth,
Of her chastity made a scorn:
"I marvel," she said, "if thy mother earth
Was not sick when thou wast born!
Thou art pale as an infant an hour dead —
Wan thing, dost weary our eye!"
And she weakly laughed and stiffened her head
And turned to her love i' the sky.
But the jessamine turned to the rose beside
With a heavy glance and but sadly sighed.

V

And the orient grew to a wealth of bars
'Neath which foam-fires churned,
And the princess proud saw her lord of stars
In a torrid furnace burned;
And the giant of life with his breath of flame
Glared down with one red eye,
And 'neath his breath this gorgeous dame
In her diamonds did wilt and die;
But the jessamine fragrant waxed purer with light;
For my lady's bosom I culled it that night.

THE HEREMITE TOAD

A human skull in a church-yard lay;
For the church was a wreck, and the tombstones old
On the graves of their dead were rotting away
To the like of their long-watched mould.

And an heremite toad in this desolate seat
Had made him an hermitage long agone,
Where the ivy frail with its delicate feet
Could creep o'er his cell of bone.

And the ground was dark, and the springing dawn,
When it struck from the tottering stones of each grave
A glimmering silver, the dawn drops wan
This skull and its ivy would lave.

* * * * * * *

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