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Sun-child, as you watched the rain Beat the pane, Saw the garden of your dreams Where the clove carnation grows And the rose Veiled with shimmering shades and gleams, Mirrored colours, mystic gleams, Fairy dreams, Drifting in your radiant eyes Half in earnest asked, that day, Half in play, Where were all the butterflies? Where were all the butterflies When the skies Clouded and their bowers of clover Bowed beneath the golden shower? Every flower Shook and the rose was brimming over. Ah, the dog-rose trembling over Thyme and clover, How it glitters in the sun, Now the hare-bells lift again Bright with rain After all the showers are done! See, when all the showers are done, How the sun Softly smiling o'er the scene Bids the white wings come and go To and fro Through the maze of gold and green. Magic webs of gold and green Rainbow sheen Mesh the maze of flower and fern, Cuckoo-grass and meadow-sweet, And the wheat Where the crimson poppies burn. Ay; and where the poppies burn, They return All across the dreamy downs, Little wings that flutter and beat O'er the sweet Bluffs the purple clover crowns. Where the fairy clover crowns Dreamy downs, And amidst the golden grass Buttercups and daisies blow To and fro When the shadowy billows pass; Time has watched them pause and pass Where Love was; Ah, what fairy butterflies, Little wild incarnate blisses, Coloured kisses, Floating under azure skies! Under those eternal skies See, they rise: Mottled wings of moony sheen, Wings in whitest star-shine dipped, Orange tipped, Eyed with black and veined with green. They were the fairies plumed with green Rainbow-sheen Ere Time bade their host begone From that palace built of roses Which still dozes In the greenwood all alone. In the greenwood all alone And unknown: Now they roam these mortal dells Wondering where that happy glade is, Painted ladies, Admirals, and Tortoise-shells. O, Fritillaries, Admirals, Tortoise-shells; You, like fragments of the skies Fringed with Autumn's richest hues, Dainty blues Patterned with mosaic dyes; Oh, and you whose peacock dyes Gleam with eyes; You, whose wings of burnished copper Burn upon the sunburnt brae Where all day Whirrs the hot and grey grasshopper; While the grey grasshopper whirrs In the furze, You that with your sulphur wings Melt into the gold perfume Of the broom Where the linnet sits and sings; You that, as a poet sings, On your wings Image forth the dreams of earth, Quickening them in form and hue To the new Glory of a brighter birth; You that bring to a brighter birth Dust and earth, Rapt to glory on your wings, All transfigured in the white Living light Shed from out the soul of things; Heralds of the soul of things, You whose wings Carry heaven through every glade; Thus transfigured from the petals Death unsettles, Little souls of leaf and blade; You that mimic bud and blade; Light and shade; Tinted souls of leaf and stone, Flower and sunny bank of sand, Fairyland Calls her children to their own; Calls them back into their own Great unknown; Where the harmonies they cull On their wings are made complete As they beat Through the Gate called Beautiful. |