A Wild Iris.

That day we wandered 'mid the hills,so lone     Clouds are not lonelier,the forest lay     In emerald darkness 'round us. Many a stone     And gnarly root, gray-mossed, made wild our way:     And many a bird the glimmering light along     Showered the golden bubbles of its song.     Then in the valley, where the brook went by,     Silvering the ledges that it rippled from,     An isolated slip of fallen sky,     Epitomizing heaven in its sum,     An iris bloomedblue, as if, flower-disguised,     The gaze of Spring had there materialized.     I have forgotten many things since then     Much beauty and much happiness and grief;     And toiled and dreamed among my fellow-men,     Rejoicing in the knowledge life is brief.     "'T is winter now," so says each barren bough;     And face and hair proclaim 't is winter now.     I would forget the gladness of that spring!     I would forget that day when she and I,     Between the bird-song and the blossoming,     Went hand in hand beneath the soft spring sky!     Much is forgotten, yea and yet, and yet,     The things we would we never can forget.     Nor I how May then minted treasuries     Of crowfoot gold; and molded out of light     The sorrel's cups, whose elfin chalices     Of limpid spar were streaked with rosy white.     Nor all the stars of twinkling spiderwort,     And mandrake moons with which her brows were girt.     But most of all, yea, it were well for me,     Me and my heart, that I forget that flower,     The wild blue iris, azure fleur-de-lis,     That she and I together found that hour.     Its recollection can but emphasize     The pain of loss, remindful of her eyes.