Poems of Madison Cawein Vol. 3 — A Twilight Moth

A TWILIGHT MOTH

Dusk is thy dawn; when Eve puts on her state Of gold and purple in the marbled west, Thou comest forth like some embodied trait, Or dim conceit, a lily-bud confessed;

Or, of a rose, the visible wish; that, white, Goes softly messengering through the night, Whom each expectant flower makes its guest.

All day the primroses have thought of thee, Their golden heads close-haremed from the heat;

All day the mystic moonflowers silkenly Veiled snowy faces,--that no bee might greet Or butterfly that, weighed with pollen, passed;-- Keeping Sultana-charms for thee, at last, Their lord, who comest to salute each sweet.

Cool-throated flowers that avoid the day’s Too fervid kisses; every bud that drinks The tipsy dew and to the starlight plays Nocturnes of fragrance, thy wing’d shadow links In bonds of secret brotherhood and faith;

O bearer of their order’s shibboleth, Like some pale symbol fluttering o’er these pinks.

What dost thou whisper in the balsam’s ear That sets it blushing, or the hollyhock’s,-- A syllabled silence that no man may hear,-- As dreamily upon its stem it rocks?

What spell dost bear from listening plant to plant, Like some white witch, some ghostly ministrant, Some spectre of some perished flower of phlox?

O voyager of that universe which lies Between the four walls of this garden fair,-- Whose constellations are the fireflies That wheel their instant courses everywhere,-- ’Mid fairy firmaments wherein one sees Mimic Boötes and the Pleiades, Thou steerest like some fairy ship-of-air.

Gnome-wrought of moonbeam-fluff and gossamer, Silent as scent, perhaps thou chariotest Mab or King Oberon; or, haply, her His queen, Titania, on some midnight quest.

-- Oh for the herb, the magic euphrasy, That should unmask thee to mine eyes, ah me!

And all that world at which my soul hath guessed!

THE GRASSHOPPER