Blue as a corn-flower, blazed the zenith: the deepening East like a scarlet poppy
Burned while, dazzled with golden bloom, white clouds like daisies, green seas like wheat,
Gripping the sign-post, first, I climbs, to sun my wings, which were wrinkled and floppy,
Spreading 'em white o'er the words No Road, and hanging fast by my six black feet.
XXVI
Still on my head was the battered old beaver, but through it my clubbed antennæ slanted,
("Feelers" yourself would probably call 'em) my battered old boots were hardly seen
Under the golden fluff of the tail! It was Bill, sir, Bill, though highly enchanted,
Spreading his beautiful snow-white pinions, tipped with orange, and veined with green.
XXVII
Yus, old Bill was an Orange-tip, a spirit in glory, a blooming Psyche!
New, it was new from East to West this rummy old world that I dreamed I knew,
How can I tell you the things that I saw with my—what shall I call 'em?—"feelers?"—O, crikey,
"Feelers?" You know how the man born blind described such colours as scarlet or blue.
XXVIII
"Scarlet," he says, "is the sound of a trumpet, blue is a flute," for he hasn't a notion!
No, nor nobody living on earth can tell it him plain, if he hasn't the sight!
That's how it stands with ragged old Bill, a-drift and a-dream on a measureless ocean,
Gifted wi' fifteen new-born senses, and seeing you blind to their new strange light.
XXIX
How can I tell you? Sir, you must wait, till you die like Bill, ere you understand it!
Only—I saw—the same as a bee that strikes to his hive ten leagues away—
Straight as a die, while I winked and blinked on that sun-warmed wood and my wings expanded
(Whistler drawings that men call wings)—I saw—and I flew—that's all I can say.
XXX