 | Flower Pieces and other poems |  |
19
AGAVE.
Amid a stately space of garden ground,
Proud of its old ancestral seat in ken
Of Andes or of Appalachian hills,
The Agave towers, and step by step is built
Above its weighty leaves the mass of bloom,
Slow-nurtured pyramid, with which compared,
Flowers at its base appear like shepherds' huts
Round those Nilotic structures that beheld
Isis and Orus and the Memphian Gods,
Long ruin'd, they still firm.
Proud of its old ancestral seat in ken
Of Andes or of Appalachian hills,
The Agave towers, and step by step is built
Above its weighty leaves the mass of bloom,
Slow-nurtured pyramid, with which compared,
Flowers at its base appear like shepherds' huts
Round those Nilotic structures that beheld
Isis and Orus and the Memphian Gods,
Long ruin'd, they still firm.
For whom but thee
(Although of foreign stock its pilèd wealth),
O great Blind Man of England, to whose sight,
Earth being shut out, unroll'd the Wars of Heaven
And sweetness of the primal Paradise,—
For whom but thee, this mighty Agave blows?
(Although of foreign stock its pilèd wealth),
O great Blind Man of England, to whose sight,
Earth being shut out, unroll'd the Wars of Heaven
And sweetness of the primal Paradise,—
For whom but thee, this mighty Agave blows?
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