THE HOME OF THE GENTIANS.
Reading edition
There is a lonesome hamlet of the dead Spread on a high ridge, up above a lake— A quiet meadow-slope, unfrequented, Where in the wind a thousand wild flowers shake.
But most of all, the delicate gentian here, Serenely blue as the sweet eyes of Hope, Doth prosper in th' untroubled atmosphere, Where wide its fringed eyelids love to ope.
You cannot set a foot upon the ground On warm September noons, in this old croft, But there some satiny blossom crushed is found, Swift springing up to look again aloft.
Prized! sung of poets! sought for singly where Adventurous feet may hardly dare to climb! Here, scattered lavishly and without care, In all the sweet luxuriance of their prime.
Ah! how the yellow-thighed, brown-coated bee Dives prodigally into those blue deeps Of glistening, odorless satin fair to see, And soon forgetting wherefore, tranced, sleeps!
And how the golden butterflies skim over, And poise, all fondly, on these lifted lips, Leaving the riches of the sweet red clover For the blue gentians' fine and fairy tips!
Beautiful wildlings, proud, refined and shy! Mysteries ye are, have been, and yet shall be: The secrets of your being in ye lie, And no man yet hath found their hidden key.
Might we not laugh at our world's vaunted lore, For ever boasting, "This, and this, I know"? Not all the science of its hard-won store Can make one single fringed gentian grow. —HOWARD GLYNDON.