The Yellow Puccoon

Who could describe you, child of mystery     And silence, born among these solitudes?     Within whose look there is a secrecy,     Old as these wanderingwoods,     And knowledge, cousin to the morning-star,     Beyond the things that mar,     And earth itself that on the soul intrudes.     How many eons what antiquity     Went to your making? When the world was young     You yet were old. What mighty company     Of cosmic forces swung     About you! On what wonders have you gazed     Since first your head was raised     To greet the Power that here your seed-spore flung!     The butterfly that woos you, and the bee     That quits the mandrakes' cups to whisper you,     Are in your confidence and sympathy,     As sunlight is and dew,     And the soft music of this woodland stream,     Telling the trees its dream,     That lean attentive its dim face unto.     With bluet, larkspur, and anemone     Your gold conspires to arrest the eye,     Making it prisoner unto Fantasy     And Vision, none'll deny!     That lead the mind (as children lead the blind     Homeward by ways that wind)     To certainties of love that round it lie.     The tanager, in scarlet livery,     Out-flaunts you not in bravery, amber-bright     As is the little moon of Farie,     That glows with golden light     From out a firmament of green, as you     From out the moss and dew     Glimmer your starry disc upon my sight.     If I might know you, have you, as the bee     And butterfly, in some more intimate sense     Or, like the brook there talking to the tree,     Win to your confidence     Then might I grasp it, solve it, in some wise,     This riddle in disguise     Named Life, through you and your experience.