Tell me—for I long to know—
How, in darkness there below,
Was your fairy fabric spun,
Spread and fashioned, three in one.
Did your gossips gold and blue,
Sky and Sunshine, choose for you,
Ere your triple forms were seen,
Suited liveries of green?
Can ye—if ye dwelt indeed
Captives of a prison seed—
Like the Genie, once again
Get you back into the grain?
Little masters, may I stand
In your presence, hat in hand,
Waiting till you solve for me
This your threefold mystery?
John B. Tabb
WILD GARDENS
On the ripened grass is a bloomy mist
Of silver and rose and amethyst
Where the long June wave has run.
There are glints of copper and tarnished brass,
And hyacinthine flames that pass
From the green fires of the sun.
This web of a thousand gleams and glows
Was woven silently out of the snows
And the patient shine and rain.
It was fashioned cunningly day by day
From the silken spear to the pollened spray
With its folded sheaths of grain.