That soft Hellenic laughter!
I marvel you don't make
An effort to be early
In budding for her sake.
Just fancy hearing daily
That velvet voice of hers!
How do you quell the riot
Of sap her coming stirs?
Perhaps she puts her face up,
(Dear Charity she is!)
For messages of summer
And better worlds than this.
You cannot blush, poor Lilac;
It is not in your race.
I simply should go crimson,
If I were in your place.
Do tell her all your secrets!
The Man declares she knows
Better than any mortal
The wonder-trick of prose.
Our prose, I mean,--how beauty
Appears to you and me;
The truth that seems so simple,
Which they call poetry.
They put it down in writing
And label it with tags,
The funny conscious people
Who mask in colored rags!
They have a thing called science,
With phrases strange and pat.
My dear, can you imagine
Intelligence like that?
And when they first discover
That yellows are not greens,
They pucker up their foreheads
And ponder what it means.
And then those cave-like places,
Churches and Capitols,
Where they all come together
Like troops of talking dolls,