Page:The Yellow Book - 06.djvu/272

 So heigh for rosy Mars

The king of all the stars!

Where purple fish leap in a scarlet sea,

In sportive play;

Where deep waves roll, wine-red as Burgundy.

Throughout the day

Across the blazing heavens sails an azure sun;

How his cerulean shades

Melt into mauve among the rosy blades!

And blood-red trees their golden shadows write

Over the violet glades.

There winged beings green as malachite

Flit in and out the cooling turquoise light

At the high noon.

And when the sun sets deeply darkly blue,

Bathing the bloody blades in opal dew,

Falls on a scarlet world a golden night,

Wherein slow riseth into sight

No pale-faced moon.

With giddy circlings, a strange steel-blue

And star-shaped satellite

Whirls through the golden blare.

As nervous starfish shun the touch,

So shoot her shrinking fingers forth,

Point East and South, point West and North,

Her mazy moving radiants such

A thousand changes wear.

They flash from her steely shield

Like a myriad scimitars,

As she laces her golden field

With