magic

I love a still conservatory      That's full of giant, breathless palms,     Azaleas, clematis and vines,      Whose quietness great Trees becalms     Filling the air with foliage,      A curved and dreamy statuary.     I like to hear a cold, pure rill      Of water trickling low, afar     With sudden little jerks and purls      Into a tank or stoneware jar,     The song of a tiny sleeping bird      Held like a shadow in its trill.     I love the mossy quietness      That grows upon the great stone flags,     The dark tree-ferns, the staghorn ferns,      The prehistoric, antlered stags     That carven stand and stare among      The silent, ferny wilderness.     And are they birds or souls that flit      Among the trees so silently,     And are they fish or ghosts that haunt      The still pools of the rockery! -     For I am but a sculptured rock      As in that magic place I sit.     Still as a great jewel is the air      With boughs and leaves smooth-carved in it,     And rocks and trees and giant ferns,      And blooms with inner radiance lit,     And naked water like a nymph      That dances tireless slim and bare.     I watch a white Nyanza float      Upon a green, untroubled pool,     A fairyland Ophelia, she      Has cast herself in water cool,     And lies while fairy cymbals ring      Drowned in her fairy castle moat.     The goldfish sing a winding song      Below her pale and waxen face,     The water-nymph is dancing by      Lifting smooth arms with mournful grace,     A stainless white dream she floats on      While fairies beat a fairy gong.     Silent the Cattleyas blaze      And thin red orchid shapes of Death     Peer savagely with twisted lips      Sucking an eerie, phantom breath     With that bright, spotted, fever'd lust      That watches lonely travellers craze.     Gigantic, mauve and hairy leaves      Hang like obliterated faces     Full of dim unattained expression      Such as haunts virgin forest places     When Silence leaps among the trees      And the echoing heart deceives.