S

Green wing and ruby throat,
What shining spell, what exquisite sorcery,
Lured you to float
And fight with bees round this one flowering tree?

Petulant imps of light,
What whisper or gleam or elfin-wild perfumes
Thrilled through the night
And drew you to this hive of rosy bloom?

One tree, and one alone,
Of all that load this magic air with spice,
Claims for its own
Your brave migration out of Paradise;

Claims you, and guides you, too,
Three thousand miles across the summer's waste
Of blooms ye knew
Less finely fit for your ethereal taste.

To poets' youthful hearts,
Even so the quivering April thoughts will fly,--
Those irised darts,
Those winged and tiny denizens of the sky.

Through beaks as needle-fine,
They suck a redder honey than bees know.
Unearthly wine
Sleeps in this bloom; and, when it falls, they go.

LINES FOR A SUN-DIAL

With shadowy pen I write,
Till time be done,
Good news of some strange light,
Some far off sun.

THE REALMS OF GOLD

(Written after hearing a line of Keats repeated by a passing stranger
under the palms of Southern California.)

Under the palms of San Diego
Where gold-skinned Mexicans loll at ease,
And the red half-moons of their black-pipped melons
Drop from their hands in the sunset seas,
And an incense, out of the old brown missions,
Blows through the orange trees;

I wished that a poet who died in Europe
Had found his way to this rose-red West;
That Keats had walked by the wide Pacific
And cradled his head on its healing breast,
And made new songs of the sun-burned sea-folk,
New poems, perhaps his best.

I thought of him, under the ripe pomegranates
At the desert's edge, where the grape-vines grow,
In a sun-kissed ranch between grey-green sage-brush
And amethyst mountains, peaked with snow,
Or watching the lights of the City of Angels
Glitter like stars below.

He should walk, at dawn, by the lemon orchards,
And breathe at ease in that dry bright air;
And the Spanish bells in their crumbling cloisters
Of brown adobe would sing to him there;
And the old Franciscans would bring him their baskets
Of apple and olive and pear.

And the mandolins, in the deep blue twilight,
Under that palm with the lion's mane,
Would pluck, once more, at his golden heart-strings,
And tell him the old sea-tales of Spain;
And there should the daughters of Hesperus teach him
Their mystic