With its watery pearls still dripping,
Which are scatter’d, colour-sprinkling,
When the sunlight fair it kisses.
O how healthy this new world is!
’Tis no churchyard of romance,
’Tis no ancient Scherbenberg,
All made up of mouldy symbols,
And of petrified perukes.
From the healthy earth are shooting
Healthy trees, and none amongst them
Blasé is, or has consumption
Eating up its spinal marrow.
On the branches are disporting
Mighty birds. Of chequer’d colours
Is their plumage. With their solemn
Lengthy beaks, and eyes encircled
With black marks, like spectacles,
They in silence gaze upon thee,
Till they shriek with sudden clamour
And like washerwomen chatter.
Yet I know not what they’re saying,
Notwithstanding that I’m learned
In birds’ tongues as Solomon,
Who a thousand wives rejoiced in,
And with birds’ tongues was acquainted,—
Not the modern ones alone,
But all dialects whatever,
Whether dead, or old, or worn-out.
New the land is, new the flowers!
New the flowers and new the fragrance!
Fragrance wild, and never heard of,
Piercing sweetly through my nostrils,
Teasing, prickling, full of passion—
And my subtle sense of smelling
Racks itself with meditating:
“Where have I e’er smelt this odour?
“Was’t in Regent Street, perchance,
“In the sunny arms so yellow
“Of that Javanese thin woman
“Who was always eating flowers?