Stretched taunt ’twixt the blades of grass,
A gossamer-fibered glass,
That the garden-spider spun,
The web, where the round rain clings
In the sag o’ its middle, swings—
A hammock for elfin things
When the stars succeed the sun.
V
And, mark, where the pale gourd grows
As high as the climbing rose,
How the tiger-moth is pressed
To that wide leaf’s under side.—
And I know where the red wasps hide,
And the brown bees,—that defied
The first strong gusts,—distressed.
VI
Yet I feel that the gray will blow
Aside for an afterglow;
And the wind, on a sudden, toss
Drenched boughs; a pattering shower
Athwart the red dusk in a glower,
Big drops heard hard on each flower,
The grass and the flowering moss.
VII
And then for a minute, may be,—
A pearl, hollow-worn, of the sea,—
A glimmer of moon will smile,
And a star, rinsed clean, through the dusk:
And a freshness of moonlit musk
O’er the showery lawns blow brusque
As spice from an Indian Isle.