All day the primroses have thought of thee, <br />Their golden heads close-haremed from the heat; <br />All day the mystic moonflowers silkenly <br />Veiled snowy faces, that no bee might greet <br />Or butterfly that, weighed with pollen, passed; <br />Keeping Sultana-charms for thee, at last, <br />Their lord, who comest to salute each sweet. <br /> <br />Cool-throated flowers that avoid the day's <br />Too fervid kisses; every bud that drinks <br />The tipsy dew and to the starlight plays <br />Nocturns of fragrance, thy wing'd shadow links <br />In bonds of secret brotherhood and faith; <br />O bearer of their order's shibboleth, <br />Like some pale symbol fluttering o'er these pinks. <br /> <br />What dost thou whisper in the balsam's ear <br />That sets it blushing, or the hollyhock's, <br />A syllabled silence that no man may hear, <br />As dreamily upon its stem it rocks? <br />What spell dost bear from listening plant to plant, <br />Like some white witch, some ghostly ministrant, <br />Some spectre of some perished flower of phlox? <br /> <br />O voyager of that universe which lies <br />Between the four walls of this garden fair, <br />Whose constellations are the fireflies <br />That wheel their instant courses everywhere' <br />'Mid fairy firmaments wherein one sees <br />Mimic Boötes and the Pleiades, <br />Thou steerest like some fairy ship-of-air. <br /> <br />Gnome-wrought of moonbeam fluff and gossamer, <br />Silent as scent, perhaps thou chariotest <br />Mab or King Oberon; or, haply, her <br />His queen, Titania, on some midnight quest. <br />Oh for the herb, the magic euphrasy, <br />That should unmask thee to mine eyes, ah me! <br />And all that world at which my soul hath guessed!<br /><br />Madison Julius Cawein<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-twilight-moth-ii-2/
