Violet, scarlet and red,
Purple and dark maroon,
And over it all the music of fall—
A weird prismatic tune.
An opera serious and grand,
An orchestra mystic and sad—
A symphony alone of color and tone
To drive a mortal mad.
SLABS AND OBELISK
Hollyhocks were blooming in the backyard near the barn,
Proud as rhododendrons by a regal mountain tarn,
Purple, white and yellow, blue and velvet red—
Humble little cottage, but a royal flower bed.
Pink and crimson roses and carnations took your breath—
Dark-eyed little pansies looking like the Head of Death;
Golden-rayed sunflowers, lifting discs of hazel brown,
Filled the heart with wonder and the garden with renown.
Little Harold, born a poet, watched the petals blow,
Read the mystic cryptographs his elders didn't know;
Heard the music in the wind like sirens on the shore,
Far beyond the sunset in the land Forevermore.
Oft the village sages saw him lying in the shade,
Gazing where the sun and vapor wrought a strange brocade—
Tapestries of gold and silver on a field of blue,
Heard him murmur softly riddles no one ever knew.
All the people pitied Harold, thinking of the end
In the cold, unfeeling world he couldn't comprehend—
Seeing nothing else but lilies, living in a trance,
In an age of facts and figures, dreaming wild romance.
But the sages now are sleeping on the little hill,
Modest slabs are keeping watch with rue and daffodil.
Harold has an obelisk that towers toward the sky,
Hollyhocks upon his mound to bless and glorify.
ON BROADWAY
Even as to-night on Broadway
Long ago I wandered down
The Great White Way of childhood,
Mystified, enchanted, as I watched
The million butterflies
That tilted through the air in rhythmic flight,
And pulsed above the petaled sweets,
And sipped the nectar of the purple thistle bloom,
Until at last they staggered down the dusty Road to Death.