BELATED.
167
Stretching in slender coiling shoot,
Far out of sight of parent root,
Making white silken fibres fast
To all the mosses as they passed;
But trembling, empty, withered, bare,
Stood all the thread-like flower-stems there.
"Too late," I said, and rambled on,
Sadder because the flowers were gone,
Yet glad, and laden with green vines
Of everything that climbs and twines;
With glossy ferns, and snowy seeds
Strung thick on scarlet stems, like beads,
And Tiarellas packed between
In mottled, scalloped disks of green,
And purple Asters fit for hem
Of High-Priest's robes, and, shading them
Like sunlit tree-tops waving broad,
Great branching stalks of Golden-Rod.
So, glad and laden, through the wood
I went, till on its edge I stood,
When at my very feet I saw,
With sudden joy, half joy, half awe,
Low nestled in a dead log's cleft
One pale Twin-Flower, the last one left.
So near my hasty step had been
To trampling it, it quivered in
The air, and like a fairy bell
Swung to and fro, with notes that fell
No doubt on hidden ears more fine,
And more of kin to it than mine.
"O dear belated thing!" I cried,
And knelt like worshipper beside
The mossy log. The wood, so still,
Far out of sight of parent root,
Making white silken fibres fast
To all the mosses as they passed;
But trembling, empty, withered, bare,
Stood all the thread-like flower-stems there.
"Too late," I said, and rambled on,
Sadder because the flowers were gone,
Yet glad, and laden with green vines
Of everything that climbs and twines;
With glossy ferns, and snowy seeds
Strung thick on scarlet stems, like beads,
And Tiarellas packed between
In mottled, scalloped disks of green,
And purple Asters fit for hem
Of High-Priest's robes, and, shading them
Like sunlit tree-tops waving broad,
Great branching stalks of Golden-Rod.
So, glad and laden, through the wood
I went, till on its edge I stood,
When at my very feet I saw,
With sudden joy, half joy, half awe,
Low nestled in a dead log's cleft
One pale Twin-Flower, the last one left.
So near my hasty step had been
To trampling it, it quivered in
The air, and like a fairy bell
Swung to and fro, with notes that fell
No doubt on hidden ears more fine,
And more of kin to it than mine.
"O dear belated thing!" I cried,
And knelt like worshipper beside
The mossy log. The wood, so still,
