QUINCE
TO LILAC: TO G.H.
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DEAR
Lilac, how enchanting
To hear of you this way!
The Man who comes a-mouching
To visit me each day
Says you too have a lover
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Far
lovelier than I.
And from his rapt description,
She loves you gloriously.
The Man prowls out each morning
To see if spring’s begun.
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What
infinite amusement
These creatures offer one!
He asks me such conundrums
As no one ever heard:
The name of April’s father,
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| The
trail of every bird,
What keeps me warm in winter,
Who wakes me up in time,
And why procrastination
Is such a fearful crime.
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And yet, who knows? He may be
Our equal ages hence—
With such pathetic glimmers
Of weird intelligence!
But this your blessed alien,
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Why
strays she roving here?
Was Orpheus not her brother,
Persephone her peer?
Was she not once a dryad
Whom Syrinx lulled to sleep
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Beside
the Dorian water,
And still her eyelids keep
The glad unperished secret
From centuries of joy,
And memories of the morning
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35 |
| When
Helen sailed for Troy?
Is her name Gertrude, Kitty,
Hypatia, or what?
I seem to half remember,
And yet have quite forgot.
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40 |
That soft Hellenic laughter!
I marvel you don’t make
An effort to be early
In budding for her sake.
Just fancy hearing daily
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That
velvet voice of hers!
How do you quell the riot
Of sap her coming stirs?
Perhaps she puts her face up,
(Dear Charity she is!)
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For
messages of summer
And better worlds than this.
You cannot blush, poor Lilac;
It is not in your race.
I simply should go crimson,
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55 |
| If I
were in your place.
Do tell her all your secrets!
The Man declares she knows
Better than any mortal
The wonder-trick of prose.
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60 |
Our prose, I mean,—how beauty
Appears to you and me;
The truth that seems so simple,
Which they call poetry.
They put it down in writing
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And
label it with tags,
The funny conscious people
Who mask in colored rags!
They have a thing called science,
With phrases strange and pat.
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70 |
My dear,
can you imagine
Intelligence like that?
And when they first discover
That yellows are not greens,
They pucker up their foreheads
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| And
ponder what it means.
And then those cave-like places,
Churches and Capitols,
Where they all come together
Like troops of talking dolls,
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To govern, as they term it,
(It’s really very odd!)
And have what they call worship
Of something they call God.
But Kitty, or whatever
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May
be her tender name,
Is more like us. She guesses
What sets the year aflame.
She knows beyond her senses;
Do tell her all you can!
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90 |
The
funny people need it,—
At least, so says The Man.
Good-by, dear. I must idle.
Sweet suns and happy rains!
How nice to have these humans
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| With
their inventive brains,—
Their little scraps of paper!
They certainly evince
Remarkable discernment.
Your ever loving Quince.
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100 |
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