Flower Pieces and other poems By William Allingham: With two designs by Dante Gabriel Rossetti |
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TIGER-LILY. |
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 | Flower Pieces and other poems |  |
22
TIGER-LILY.
This is an Indian sun, well-nigh,
And the hour in a deep green shade to lie.
But strolling off from your palanquin
As though in your English barouche you'd been,
If there should ray through the forest-gloom edge,
Under the jungle-grass's white plumage,
Two sudden stars of fierce red fire
Just in front, and nigher and nigher
Crawling, you saw—and those eyes unwinking
Tied you from running, upheld you from sinking,
Till the claw'd yellow Strength all swarthy barr'd,
With that serpenting tail stretched stiff and hard
Should crash—
And the hour in a deep green shade to lie.
But strolling off from your palanquin
As though in your English barouche you'd been,
If there should ray through the forest-gloom edge,
Under the jungle-grass's white plumage,
Two sudden stars of fierce red fire
Just in front, and nigher and nigher
Crawling, you saw—and those eyes unwinking
Tied you from running, upheld you from sinking,
Till the claw'd yellow Strength all swarthy barr'd,
With that serpenting tail stretched stiff and hard
Should crash—
Our gentle garden-border,
Can it feed us with fancies of murder?
Lily that set us off on such freaks
Rich with dark splendid spots and streaks,
A crown on a sceptre—blame you? or else us?
Surely not him!—but see ‘Paracelsus.’
Can it feed us with fancies of murder?
Lily that set us off on such freaks
Rich with dark splendid spots and streaks,
A crown on a sceptre—blame you? or else us?
Surely not him!—but see ‘Paracelsus.’
| Flower Pieces and other poems | |