Opals

My soul is like this cloudy, flaming opal ring. The fields of earth are in it, green and glimmering, The waves of the blue sky, night's purple flower of noon, The vanishing cold scintillations of the moon, And the red heart that is a flame within a flame. And as the opal dies, and is re-born the same, And all the fire that is its life-blood seems to dart Through the veined variable intricacies of its heart, And ever wandering ever wanders back again, So must my swift soul constant to itself remain. Opal, have I not been as variable as you? But, cloudy opal flaming green and red and blue, Are you not ever constant in your varying, Even as my soul, O captive opal of my ring?