FLOWER FANCIES
I
A YELLOW PANSY
To the wall of the old green garden
A butterfly quivering came;
His wings on the sombre lichens
Played like a yellow flame.
He looked at the gray geraniums,
And the sleepy four-o’-clocks;
He looked at the low lanes bordered
With the glossy-growing box.
He longed for the peace and the silence,
And the shadows that lengthened there,
And his wee wild heart was weary
Of skimming the endless air.
And now in the old green garden,—
I know not how it came,—
A single pansy is blooming,
Bright as a yellow flame.
And whenever a gay gust passes,
It quivers as if with pain,
For the butterfly-soul that is in it
Longs for the winds again!
II
THE SPRING BEAUTIES
The Puritan Spring Beauties stood freshly clad for church;
A Thrush, white-breasted, o’er them sat singing on his perch.
“Happy be! for fair are ye!” the gentle singer told them,
But presently a buff-coat Bee came booming up to scold them.
“Vanity, oh, vanity!
Young maids, beware of vanity!”
Grumbled out the buff-coat Bee,
Half parson-like, half soldierly.
The sweet-faced maidens trembled, with pretty, pinky blushes,
Convinced that it was wicked to listen to the Thrushes;
And when, that shady afternoon, I chanced that way to pass,
They hung their little bonnets down and looked into the grass.
All because the buff-coat Bee
Lectured them so solemnly:—
“Vanity, oh, vanity!
Young maids, beware of vanity!”
III
THISBE
The garden within was shaded,
And guarded about from sight;
The fragrance flowed to the south wind,
The fountain leaped to the light.
And the street without was narrow,
And dusty, and hot, and mean;
But the bush that bore white roses,
She leaned to the fence between:
And softly she sought a crevice
In that barrier blank and tall,
And shyly she thrust out through it
Her loveliest bud of all.
And tender to touch, and gracious,
And pure as the moon’s pure shine,
The full rose paled and was perfect,—
For whose eyes, for whose lips, but mine!