A Twilight Moth

Dusk is thy dawn; when Eve puts on its state     Of gold and purple in the marbled west,     Thou comest forth like some embodied trait,     Or dim conceit, a lily bud confessed;     Or of a rose the visible wish; that, white,     Goes softly messengering through the night,     Whom each expectant flower makes its guest.     All day the primroses have thought of thee,     Their golden heads close-haremed from the heat;     All day the mystic moonflowers silkenly     Veiled snowy faces, - that no bee might greet,     Or butterfly that, weighed with pollen, passed; -     Keeping Sultana charms for thee, at last,     Their lord, who comest to salute each sweet.     Cool-throated flowers that avoid the day's     Too fervid kisses; every bud that drinks     The tipsy dew and to the starlight plays     Nocturnes of fragrance, thy wing'd shadow links     In bonds of secret brotherhood and faith;     O bearer of their order's shibboleth,     Like some pale symbol fluttering o'er these pinks.     What dost them whisper in the balsam's ear     That sets it blushing, or the hollyhock's, -     A syllabled silence that no man may hear, -     As dreamily upon its stem it rocks?     What spell dost bear from listening plant to plant,     Like some white witch, some ghostly ministrant,     Some specter of some perished flower of phlox?     O voyager of that universe which lies     Between the four walls of this garden fair, -     Whose constellations are the fireflies     That wheel their instant courses everywhere, -     Mid faery firmaments wherein one sees     Mimic Botes and the Pleiades,     Thou steerest like some faery ship of air.     Gnome-wrought of moonbeam-fluff and gossamer,     Silent as scent, perhaps thou chariotest     Mab or King Oberon; or, haply, her     His queen, Titania, on some midnight quest. -     Oh for the herb, the magic euphrasy,     That should unmask thee to mine eyes, ah me!     And all that world at which my soul hath guessed!