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 laughter As 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 flutey Voice lure your loving swain, But I know one other to whom you are in beauty Born in vain; Hair like the setting sun, Her eyes a rising star, Motions gracious as reeds by Babylon, bar All 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, @3As once in her fire-lit heart I felt the furies@1 Beating, beating. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...LORD ALCOHOL; SONG by THOMAS LOVELL BEDDOES IDYLLS OF THE KING: BALIN AND BALAN by ALFRED TENNYSON DEATH AND THE LADY; THEIR BARGAIN TOLD AGAIN by LEONIE ADAMS SUMMER NIGHT by KENNETH SLADE ALLING ILLUSIONS by EDMUND CHARLES BLUNDEN |