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.