Greenness Unsecreted

IN ombre gateways I had loitered, stopped To speak unto my nearest brother, Toad, Within the forest where the cobras propped Green twists on frothy treetops, their abode: “Toad, I salute you! in your chilly eye I see the mignonette of modesty.” He did not answer, crouching like a sin, Steeped in a lethargy too dull to pierce, Centuple wisdom folded in his skin— He stared with humble stare that was not fierce, And yet within that stare I seemed to know The stare that maddened Hieronymo. I followed then a wedge of thoughtful cranes Who fled across the silence drearily From desolations and eternal rains Across the frozen ridge of Rhodope, The stars grown piteous of my misery Dropped golden tears into the poem-sea. I have since dived, bathed in the poem-sea, In spilt genethliacs of amber wine Mellowed to milk, like turtle-feathers free Floating and flurry on the teasing brine, Below, I saw those youths that died of love And wandered with them in the myrtle grove.[A] And when I rose a slender oaten pipe Made music in the entrails of my ears, Rich bandaliers of fruit grown pulpy-ripe Moistened the membranes and dissolved my fears, I could remember at her day of birth How Flora with her daisies strewed the earth. But man still chased his jet-black butterflies, And looking up, as from a rippled cloud, Shunned me with viscous terror in his eyes, Then fell a-triply sewing at his shroud, Lest I should mar the self-fomenting strife And cultivated void that was his life.