CARNATIONS IN WINTER

Your carmine flakes of bloom to-night

The fire of wintry sunsets hold;

Again in dreams you burn to light

A far Canadian garden old.

The blue north summer over it

Is bland with long ethereal days;

The gleaming martins wheel and flit

Where breaks your sun down orient ways.

There, when the gradual twilight falls,

Through quietudes of dusk afar,

Hermit antiphonal hermit calls

From hills below the first pale star.

Then in your passionate love's foredoom

Once more your spirit stirs the air,

And you are lifted through the gloom

To warm the coils of her dark hair.