Famous Single Poems
victim of a man of this type, who belongs to the poison insect order of humanity. He is only an insect, and yet his persistent buzz and sting can produce great discomfort.”
A few years later, Mrs. Wilcox had a somewhat similar experience with another poem. In December, 1886, she was shopping in New York and was shown a very beautiful opal, the first she had ever seen, by a Mr. Marcus, a dealer in precious stones, who remarked that he wished she would write a poem about it to be used in a book on gems which he was preparing. He added that the opal had always seemed to him the child of the sunbeam and the moonbeam, but though he had mentioned this idea to several New York poets, none of them had been able to make anything of it. Mrs. Wilcox said she was sure that she could, and the next morning, in about half an hour’s time, wrote the following:
THE BIRTH OF THE OPAL
The Sunbeam loved the Moonbeam,
And followed her low and high,
But the Moonbeam fled and hid her head,
She was so shy—so shy.
The Sunbeam wooed with passion;
Ah, he was a lover bold!
And his heart was afire with mad desire,
For the Moonbeam pale and cold.
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