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LILIES.
“The evening and the morning make our day.”
—E. B. Browning.
—E. B. Browning.
By woody walks, near pathways dank
With the drip of the thick-wove boughs they grew,
By the side of the garlic, wild and rank,
The Valley-lilies, pure as dew.
Shrouded and swathed in a tender gleam,
Gold in the sun, and dim in the shade,
Lilies globe like, and orbed, and rayed,
Flashed, afloat on the glittering stream;
Each on its cool, thick leaf apart,
Flung eager-wide to day's
Thoreau writes, “I have passed down Concord River before sunrise on a summer morning, between fields of lilies still shut in sleep; and when at length the flakes of sunlight from over the bank fell on the surface of the water, whole fields of white blossoms seemed to flash open before me as I floated along, like the unfolding of a banner. So sensible is this flower to the influence of the sun's rays.”
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To a touch beloved, each warm, trembling heart
For the light of the morning to flood and fill.
At mid-day the lilies stood up tall,
Stood up straight, 'neath the garden wall,
White and regal like queens that bear
Beneath their crowns disconsolate
A weight of woe and a world of care,
Who are glad when the night bears all away,
Yet are ever queens through their long white day,
Robed and fair and desolate.
Golden were some, and some had curled
Their leaves back in pride, or in scorn of the world,
And some were tawny, and streaked, and pied,
And freck'd, as if in them something ill
Had passed, but had left them lilies still.
And after them came a sworded strife
Of lilies that warred with death or with life,
Flushed or pallid with love or hate
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They changed from their rose-bloom delicate,
And strove, so that neither overcame;
For as I marvelled thereat, day grew
More dim, and the flowers' sweet miracle
Went by, and a sudden twilight fell,
And with it brought to my soul the scent
Of mossy wood-walks drenched in dew,
And of Valley-lilies crushed and bent.
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