IN the land of flag-lilies, Where burst in golden clangours The joy-bells of the broom, You were full of willy-nillies, Pets, and bee-like angers: Flaming like a dusky poppy, In a wrathful bloom. You were full of sweet and sour, Like a dish of strawberries Set about with curd. In your petulant foot was power, In your wilful innocences, Your wild and fragrant word. O, was it you that sweetly spake, Or I that sweetly heard? Yellow were the wheat-ways, The poppies were most red; And all your meet and feat ways, Your sudden bee-like snarlings, -- Ah, do you remember, Darling of the darlings? Or is it but an ember, A rusted peal of joy-bells, Their golden buzzings dead? Now at one, and now at two, Swift to pout and swift to woo, The maid I knew: Still I see the dusked tresses -- But the old angers, old caresses? Still your eyes are autumn thunders, But where are @3you,@1 child, you? This your beauty is a script Writ with pencil brightest-dipt -- Oh, it is the fairest scroll For a young, departed soul! -- Thus you say: 'Thrice three years ago to-day, There was one Shall no more beneath the sun Darkle, fondle, featly play. If to think on her be gloom, Rejoice she has so rich a tomb!' But there's he -- Ask thou not who it may be! -- That, until Time's boughs are bare, Shall be unconsoled for her. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...TO W.E.B. DUBOIS - SCHOLAR by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON ELEGY: THE LAMENT OF EDWARD BLASTOCK; FOR RICHARD ROWLEY by EDITH SITWELL IMMORTALITY by EMILY DICKINSON THE CHOIRMASTER'S BURIAL by THOMAS HARDY GOD'S GRANDEUR by GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS THE WANDER-LOVERS by RICHARD HOVEY |