When The Locusts Are In Bloom
When the locusts are in bloom
Every bud - a riven tomb
Yields a spirit form, emerging pure as snow,
Dancing lightly on the breeze
Like the foam on fairy seas,
Swinging like enchanted censers to and fro.
And the moonbeams, white and chaste,
Through the branches interlaced,
How they seem to drip into each ivory cup,
Where anon, the summer heats
Mingle all those honeyed sweets
That the bee, with nectar drunken, loves to sup.
Wondrous pendants set with gems
Clinging to the swaying stems
How each chalice overflows into the stream
Of the scented hours that glide
Down a timeless, golden tide
To the islands where the lotus eaters dream.
So we idly float along
On the bluebird’s lilting song
To a region where the blossoms never die.
For through all the cloying hours
In the thralldom of the flowers
Fancy roams in far off cloudlands of the sky.