A Flower Of The Fields

Bee-Bitten in the orchard hung The peach; or, fallen in the weeds, Lay rotting, where still sucked and sung The gray bee, boring to its seed's Pink pulp and honey blackly stung. The orchard-path, which led around The garden, with its heat one twinge Of dinning locusts, picket-bound And ragged, brought me where one hinge Held up the gate that scraped the ground. All seemed the same: the martin-box Sun-warped with pigmy balconies Still stood, with all its twittering flocks, Perched on its pole above the peas And silvery-seeded onion-stocks. The clove-pink and the rose; the clump Of coppery sunflowers, with the heat Sick to the heart: the garden stump, Red with geranium-pots, arid sweet With moss and ferns, this side the pump. I rested, with one hesitant hand Upon the gate. The lonesome day, Droning with insects, made the land One dry stagnation. Soaked with hay And scents of weeds the hot wind fanned. I breathed the sultry scents, my eyes Parched as my lips. And yet I felt My limbs were ice. As one who flies To some wild woe. How sleepy smelt The hay-sweet heat that soaked the skies! Noon nodded; dreamier, lonesomer For one long, plaintive, forest-side Bird-quaver. And I knew me near Some heartbreak anguish.. . She had died. I felt it, and no need to hear! I passed the quince and pear-tree; where, All up the porch, a grape-vine trails How strange that fruit, whatever air Or earth it grows in, never fails To find its native flavour there! And she was as a flower, too, That grows its proper bloom and scent No matter what the soil: she, who, Born better than her place, still lent Grace to the lowliness she knew.. . They met me at the porch, and were Sad-eyed with weeping. Then the room Shut out the country's heat and purr, And left light stricken into gloom So love and I might look on her.