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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
LINES TO A NASTURTIUM (A LOVER MUSES), by ANNE SPENCER Poet's Biography First Line: Flame-flower, day-torch, mauna loa Last Line: Beating, beating. Alternate Author Name(s): Bannister, Anne Bethel Scales Subject(s): African Americans; African Americans - Women; Negroes; American Blacks | |||
Flame-flower, Day-torch, Mauna Loa, I saw a daring bee, today, pause and soar Into your flaming heart; Then did I hear crisp, crinkled laughter As the furies after tore him apart? A bird, next, small and humming, Looked into your startled depths and fled . . . Surely, some dread sight, and dafter Than human eyes as mine can see, Set the stricken air waves drumming In his flight. Day-torch, Flame-flower, cool-hot Beauty, I cannot see, I cannot hear your flutey Voice lure your loving swain, But I know one other to whom you are in beauty Born in vain; Hair like the setting sun, Her eyes a rising star, Motions gracious as reeds by Babylon, bar All your competing; Hands like, how like, brown lilies sweet, Cloth of gold were fair enough to touch her feet . . . Ah, how the sense floods at my repeating, As once in her fire-lit heart I felt the furies Beating, beating. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...MY AUNT ELLA MAE by MICHAEL S. HARPER DERRICK POEM (THE LOST WORLD) by TERRANCE HAYES ODE TO BIG TREND by TERRANCE HAYES WOOFER (WHEN I CONSIDER THE AFRICAN-AMERICAN) by TERRANCE HAYES CONDITIONS XXI by ESSEX HEMPHILL |
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