Classic and Contemporary Poetry
A TULIP BLOSSOMED, ONE MORNING IN MAY, by JAMES GATES PERCIVAL Poet's Biography Last Line: Their sweetness over the ocean Subject(s): Flowers | ||||||||
A tulip blossomed, one morning in May, By the side of a sanded alley; Its leaves were dressed in a rich array, Like the clouds at the earliest dawn of day, When the mist rolls over the valley: The dew had descended the night before, And lay in its velvet bosom, And its spreading urn was flowing o'er, And the crystal heightened the tints it bore On its yellow and crimson blossom. A sweet red-rose, on its bending thorn, Its bud was newly spreading, And the flowing effulgence of early morn Its beams on its breast was shedding; The petals were heavy with dripping tears, That twinkled in pearly brightness, And the thrush in its covert thrilled my ears With a varied song of lightness. A lily, in mantle of purest snow, Hung over a silent fountain, And the wave, in its calm and quiet flow, Displayed its silken leaves below, Like the drift on the windy mountain; It bowed with the moisture the night had wept, When the stars shone over the billow, And white-winged spirits their vigils kept, Where beauty and innocence sweetly slept On its pure and thornless pillow. A hyacinth lifted its purple bell From the slender leaves around it; It curved its cup in a flowing swell, And a starry circle crowned it; The deep-blue tincture that robed it seemed The gloomiest garb of sorrow, As if on its eye no brightness beamed, And it never in clearer moments dreamed Of a fair and a calm to-morrow. A daisy peeped from the tufted sod, In its bashful modesty drooping; Where often the morn, as I lightly trod, In bounding youth, the fallow clod, Had over it seen me stooping; It looked in my face with a dewy eye From its ring of ruby lashes, And it seemed that a brighter was lurking by, The fires of whose ebony lustre fly Like summer's dazzling flashes. And the wind, with a soft and silent wing, Brushed over this wild of flowers, And it wakened the birds, who began to sing Their hymn to the season of love and spring, In the shade of the bending bowers; And it culled their full nectareous store, In its lightly fluttering motion, As when from Hybla's murmuring shore The evening breeze from her thyme-beds bore Their sweetness over the ocean. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THEY SAW THE PROBLEM by MARK JARMAN SHAKE THE SUPERFLUX! by DAVID LEHMAN THE M??TIER OF BLOSSOMING by DENISE LEVERTOV TANKA DIARY (6) by HARRYETTE MULLEN VARIATIONS: 17 by CONRAD AIKEN FORCED BLOOM by STEPHEN ELLIOTT DUNN THE CORAL GROVE by JAMES GATES PERCIVAL |
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