Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, PSYCHE LAUGHS, by EDITH MATILDA THOMAS


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

PSYCHE LAUGHS, by             Poet's Biography
First Line: All we on whom the muse compulsion lays
Last Line: She could not sulking stay.


ALL we on whom the Muse compulsion lays --
We have our days and days!
And hence, with but the slightest cause, or no,
In glorious fettle go.
Or, with as little reason, drag along
Weft of our Wings of Song.
Thus is the Soul -- frail Sovereign of Sense --
O'erruled, she knows not whence!

My mood that day was of a vague distress
At my Soul's helplessness --
So weak a thing, so all inadequate
Even to the kindest fate!
And as I stepped that morning down the street,
Her type I seemed to meet --
Upon the cobbled pave a butterfly,
Child of the sunrise sky,
Yet dimmed, as though with drench of morning dew,
Its wings of splendid hue.
Oh, for a flower's touch in my fingertip,
Beneath its wings to slip,
To carry to some soft-strewn couch to die
This beauty from on high!
(To mine enlisted and self-pitying heart
Its own best counterpart.)

When I would touch -- with touch made flower-light --
Uprose that radiant sprite,
And took, in curving line, its street of air,
Its path to Anywhere,
A wanderer through the subtle element
For which its wings were lent.
And, if were ever laughter to the eye,
Then laughed that butterfly.
Till all its flickering mirth, quite past my sight,
Dissolved in native light.
Or was it but my Soul that laughed in me --
Like frail -- like safe -- like free?
Seeing her humorous symbol float away,
She could not sulking stay.





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