Caroling Dusk/Lines to a Nasturtium

by Annie Bethel Scales Spencer

LINES TO A NASTURTIUM

(A lover muses )

Flame-flower, Day-torch, Mauna Loa,I saw a daring bee, today, pause, and soar, Into your flaming heart;Then did I hear crisp, crinkled laughterAs the furies after tore him apart? A bird, next, small and humming,Looked into your startled depths and fled. . . . .Surely, some dread sight, and dafter Than human eyes as mine can see,Set the stricken air waves drumming In his flight.

Day-torch, Flame-flower, cool-hot Beauty,I cannot see, I cannot hear your fluteyVoice lure your loving swain,But I know one other to whom you are in beautyBorn in vain:Hair like the setting sun,Her eyes a rising star,Motions gracious as reeds by Babylon, barAll your competing;Hands like, how like, brown lilies sweet,Cloth of gold were fair enough to touch her feet . . . Ah, how the sense floods at my repeating,As once in her fire-lit heart I felt the furiesBeating, beating.