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Lines to a Nasturtium

by Anne Spencer · in Voices of the Harlem Renaissance
From Caroling Dusk (1927)

(A lover muses)

Flame-flower, Day-torch, Mauna Loa,
I saw a daring bee, today, pause, and soar,
  Into your flaming heart;
Then did I hear crisp, crinkled laughter
As the furies after tore him apart?
  A bird, next, small and humming,
Looked into your startled depths and fled....
Surely, some dread sight, and dafter
  Than human eyes as mine can see,
Set the stricken air waves drumming
  In his flight.

Day-torch, Flame-flower, cool-hot Beauty,
I cannot see, I cannot hear your flutey
Voice lure your loving swain,
But I know one other to whom you are in beauty
Born in vain:
Hair like the setting sun,
Her eyes a rising star,
Motions gracious as reeds by Babylon, bar
All your competing;
Hands like, how like, brown lilies sweet,
Cloth of gold were fair enough to touch her feet ...
Ah, how the sense floods at my repeating,
As once in her fire-lit heart I felt the furies
Beating, beating.

This poem is in the public domain. Source text: Project Gutenberg.

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