The Two Twilights. Henry A. Beers

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      An open door and door-steps wide,

      With pillared vines on either side,

      And terraced flowers, stair over stair,

      Standing in pots of earthenware

      Where stiff processions filed around —

      Black on the smooth, sienna ground.

      Tubers and bulbs now blossomed there

      Which, in the moisty hot-house air,

      Lay winter long in patient rows,

      Glassed snugly in from Christmas snows:

      Tuberoses, with white, waxy gems

      In bunches on their reed-like stems;

      Their fragrance forced by art too soon

      To mingle with the sweets of June.

      (So breathes the thin blue smoke, that steals

      From ashes of the gilt pastilles,

      Burnt slowly, as the brazier swings,

      In dim saloons of eastern kings.)

      I saw the calla's arching cup

      With yellow spadix standing up,

      Its liquid scents to stir and mix —

      The goldenest of toddy-sticks;

      Roses and purple fuchsia drops;

      Camellias, which the gardener crops

      To make the sickening wreaths that lie

      On coffins when our loved ones die.

      These all and many more were there;

      Monsters and grandifloras rare,

      With tropical broad leaves, grown rank,

      Drinking the waters of the tank

      Wherein the lotus-lilies bathe;

      All curious forms of spur and spathe,

      Pitcher and sac and cactus-thorn,

      There in the fresh New England morn.

      But where the sun came colored through

      Translucent petals wet with dew,

      The interspace was carpeted

      With oriel lights and nodes of red,

      Orange and blue and violet,

      That wove strange figures, as they met,

      Of airier tissue, brighter blooms

      Than tumble from the Persian looms.

      So at the pontiff's feasts, they tell,

      From the board's edge the goblet fell,

      Spilled from its throat the purple tide

      And stained the pavement far and wide.

      Such steps wise Sheba trod upon

      Up to the throne of Solomon;

      So bright the angel-crowded steep

      Which Israel's vision scaled in sleep.

      What one is she whose feet shall dare

      Tread that illuminated stair?

      Like Sheba, queen; like angels, fair?

      Oh listen! In the morning air

      The blossoms all are hanging still —

      The queen is standing on the sill.

      No Sheba she; her virgin zone

      Proclaims her royalty alone:

      (Such royalty the lions own.)

      Yet all too cheap the patterned stone

      That paves kings' palaces, to feel

      The pressure of her gaiter's heel.

      The girlish grace that lit her face

      Made sunshine in a dusky place —

      The old silk hood, demure and quaint,

      Wherein she seemed an altar-saint

      Fresh-tinted, though in setting old

      Of dingy carving and tarnished gold;

      Her eyes, the candles in that shrine,

      Making Madonna's face to shine.

      Lingering I passed, but evermore

      Abide with me the open door,

      The doorsteps wide, the flowers that stand

      In brilliant ranks on either hand,

      The two white pillars and the vine

      Of bitter-sweet and lush woodbine,

      And – from my weary paths as far

      As Sheba or the angels are —

      Between, upon the wooden sill,

      Thou, Queen of Hearts, art standing still.

      Here while I read the light forsakes the pane;

      Metempsychosis of the twilight gray —

      Into green aisles of Epping or Ardenne

      The level lines of print stretch far away.

      The book-leaves whisper like the forest-leaves;

      A smell of ancient woods, a breeze of morn,

      A breath СКАЧАТЬ