^{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 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 fluty
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 senses flood at my repeating,
As once in her fire-lit heart I felt the furies
Beating, beating.

I do not care for sleep, I’ll wait awhile 
For Love to come out of the darkness, wait
For laughter, gifted with the frequent fate
Of dusk-lit hope, to touch me with the smile 
Of moon and star and joy of that last mile 
Before I reach the sea. The ships are late
And mayhap laden with the precious freight
Dawn brings from Life’s eternal summer isle.

And should I find the sweeter fruits of dream—
The oranges of love and mating song—
I’ll laugh so true the morn will gayly seem 
Endless and ships full laden with a throng 
Of beauty, dreams and loves will come to me 
Out of the surge of yonder silver sea.