  Dusk is thy dawn; when Eve puts on her 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 winged 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 thou 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 spectre 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 fairy firmaments wherein one sees Mimic BoÖtes and the Pleiades, Thou steerest like some fairy ship-of-air. Gnome-wrought of moonbeam fluff and gossamer, Silent as scent, perhaps thou chariotest Mab or king Oberon; or, haply, her O 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! |
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