This butterfly brought one, that errant vine
Conveys a Word; the Sea, it would seem, knows....
Sweet tidings that I cannot quite divine
The flowers disclose.
But since you ask me idly, let me say,
I know not whence I am, nor why I come;
Yet I sit with you in your inn today
Devising speech—though dumb.
RAIN PICTURES
First Picture
MONOCHORD
THE soft rain falls; the willow trees
Throw silver tangle on the breeze,
While Robin tunes his pipe and blows
His joyance down the orchard-close.
Amid the spraying crystal notes
One irridescent bubble floats—
Bubble of music, that careens
Adown the pasture’s mottled greens.
How tell the rapture that he sings
To beatings of his happy wings?
Why praise the story that he tells,
The message that his bosom swells ...?
Ah! he is Robin, and he goes,
Singing the only song he knows.
The sweet saps rise; the maple trees
Drink deep and scatter crimson lees.
I wander up and down the stream,
Singing the music of my dream;
Its cadence vague, its plaintive strain
Attunes it to the Harp of Rain;
The muted branches softly play
An obligato to my lay;
The drooping willows pluck the stream
With pensive touch that marks the theme,
And all the trilling water-tune
Accompanies my simple rune.
No heart have I to wake the green
With joyous lilting loud and keen.
I tune no pipe for jaunty snatch
Like Robin’s loud ecstatic catch.
I sing the song of wistful things,
Dumb longings, blind imaginings....
And yet, why blame me that I stray,
Crooning so poor a rondelay?
Ah! I am Human, and I go
Singing the only song I know.
Second Picture
OMEN
My tree-calf books; my seven branched candle-stick;
The pine-knot’s bursting heart, flame-plethoric;
My jug from old Fiesole; the rain,
And the witch-vine that darkly taps the pane.