Page:Poems, now first collected, Stedman, 1897.djvu/189

 THE ROSE AND THE JASMINE

dies the rippling murmur of the strings

That followed long, half-striving to retake,

The burden of the lover's ended song.

Silence! but we who listened linger yet,

Two of the soul's near portals still unclosed—

Sight and the sense of odor. At our feet,

Beneath the open jalousies, is spread

A copse of leaf and bloom, a knotted wild

Of foliage and purple flowering vines,

With here a dagger-plant to pierce them through,

And there a lone papaya lifting high

Its golden-gourded cresset. Night's high noon

Is luminous; that swooning silvery hour

When the concentrate spirit of the South

Grows visible—so rare, and yet so filled

With tremulous pulsation that it seems

All light and fragrance and ethereal dew.

Two vases—carved from some dark, precious wood,

The red-grained heart of olden trees that cling 169