Page:Poetry, a magazine of verse, Volume 1 (October 1912-March 1913).djvu/16

POETRY: A Magazine of Verse 1 In A major Poca sostenuto

The laying tide of inarticulate air Breaks here in flowers as the sea in foam, But with no satin lisp of failing wave: The odor-laden winds are very still. An unimagined music here exhales In upcurled petal, dreamy bud half-furled, And variations of thin vivid leaf: Symphonic beauty that some god forgot. If form could waken into lyric sound, This flock of irises like poising birds Would feel song at their slender feathered throats, And pour into a grey-winged aria Their wrinkled silver fingermarked with pearl; That flight of ivory roses high along The airy azure of the larkspur spires Would be a fugue to puzzle nightingales With too-evasive rapture, phrase on phrase. Where the hibiscus flares would cymbals clash, And the black cypress like a deep bassoon Would hum a clouded amber melody.

But all across the trudging ragged chords That are the tangled grasses in the heat, The mariposa lilies fluttering Like trills upon some archangelic flute,