Garden Gossip
Thin, chisel-fine a cricket chipped
The crystal silence into sound;
And where the branches dreamed and dripped
A grasshopper its dagger stripped
And on the humming darkness ground.
A bat, against the gibbous moon,
Danced, implike, with its lone delight;
The glowworm scrawled a golden rune
Upon the dark; and, emerald-strewn,
The firefly hung with lamps the night.
The flowers said their beads in prayer,
Dew-syllables of sighed perfume;
Or talked of two, soft-standing there,
One like a gladiole, straight and fair,
And one like some rich poppy-bloom.
The mignonette and feverfew
Laid their pale brows together:-'See!’
One whispered: ‘Did their step thrill through
Your roots?’-'Like rain.'-'I touched the two
And a new bud was born in me.’
One rose said to another:-'Whose
Is this dim music? song, that parts
My crimson petals like the dews?’
‘My blossom trembles with sweet news–
It is the love of two young hearts.’
Other works by Madison Cawein...
