Classic and Contemporary Poetry
RHAPSODY OF PEONIES, by SALLIE MACON GARLAND PIPPEN First Line: All my world is glad today Last Line: Ambrosial feast, the peony! Alternate Author Name(s): Pippen, Sally Macon Garland Subject(s): Peonies | ||||||||
All my world is glad today Since I saw the peonies sway In a garden, row on row, Snow-white spheres, and globes aglow With the rose and red that flood Sunset skies and lovers' blood. All my heart in thankfulness, All my heart and none the less Take, Miss Mary Angeline Ecstasy is mounting wine From your garden's offerings To my being's inmost springs. Hurrying through quiet streets I go, How could any passer know This tumultuous soul of me Drinking depths deliciously Of the beauty, radiant, rare, In blossoms old-time gardens bear! I take my place within the bank, Where I, a member of the rank Of women earning daily bread, And by a moderate clerkship fed, Yet struggle towards that farther goal Of nourishment to feed the soul. I add and type with each machine And serve with look and way serene, Though all the while subconscious me Is reveling with the peony, Though all the while the real me Is craving, dreamingpeony! Ah! eyelids close and nostrils thrill To envision you, to drink their fill Of perfume. Prone on sod I'd lie Within your ranks, and gladly die To all but beauty and perfume Of you, God-given peony bloom. Fragrance fills meO to lose All but this! O to bemuse Being in fragrance! Now know I Something kin to those who lie In opium's armsI'd nothing know But scent of peonies! Lying so, Buried in a mass of flowers, Petals raining perfumed showers, What to me were village street When the world my soul would meet? White, you'd give me Alpine snow, All the Matterhorn I'd know. Red, you bring the world of love, Fairy dreams before me move At your rich, compelling heart Bidding my life-currents start. All is possible to me, Castles, prince of high degree. Proud orb of rose, you rightly reign Wherever royal courtiers train. The hunt, the ball, the throne-room shows You queening it, transcendent rose. And all is mine, from you to me, O, matchless flower of peony! You've lifted, made menevermore Can life be as it was before Your lavish loveliness befell My hungry spirit.Mark this well Creations are you half-divine Of Heaven, and Mary Angeline. O, body bread! O, food of soul! Bank clerking, and that farther goal, "Man shall not live by bread alone!" O, earthly bread too oft of stone! O, food for man's divinity, Ambrosial feast, the peony! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE DAY OF THE PEONIES by JOHN CIARDI LIKE THE PEONIES (TO 'TEACHER') by E. P. TO S. E. D by EFFIE WALLER SMITH BETWEEN PEONY AND PIVOINE I HAD NO HESITATION ONLY IN by DOMINIQUE FOURCADE TRIUMPH by SALLIE MACON GARLAND PIPPEN |
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