The silver net

Chapter 31: VIOLETS

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About This Book

A sequence of lyrical meditations that shifts between dreamlike visions, confessional solitude, and mythic or biblical reverie. Recurring images of sea and shipwreck, roses and gardens, and masked or legendary figures are used to probe longing, shame, desire, and the hope for spiritual renewal. Poems alternate between dramatic monologue, fable-like sketches, and brief nocturnes, exploring the tensions between illusion and revelation, life and death, and love as both ensnaring and ennobling, producing a compact, contemplative cycle of symbolist-inflected verse.

VIOLETS

Mignon, you love the myrtle and the rose,

The lily, all the flowers which grace the close

Of queenly Nature’s Eden; love them well,

For there are mysteries more than man can tell

Deep-hidden in their perfumed censers, dear,

And music unknown to the human ear

In their harmonious scales of varied hues—

Crimson imperial and eastern blues,

Emerald, and sheeny ors, and glittering steel—

Still more for those who have a soul to feel

The breath of love which is of beauty born.

Bright flowers, bejewelled with the dew of morn,

As you are sweet and pure; and God, I trow,

Took of the new-born violet’s deepest glow

To make the wonder of your tender eyes.