Another poem

INVOCATION

Mary Newmarch Prescott

Oh, sweet Romance, let me know

If by any rhyme or reason

I can woo you, that you blow

In my garden every season!

Tell me what the soil you need.

What cool showers, what April weather;

If like any common seed

You put up a pale green feather?

Though a hundred years are vaunted

To perfect the aloe flower.

You, dear Romance, most undaunted.

Bloom a hundred times an hour.

And though bay-leaves crown the brave

While the myrtle's for the poet.

Plant immortal, I would crave

Seed of thee that I might sow it

Broadcast, round my wicket-gate,

Till—wide-spreading, multiplying,

Ingress to dull care denying

—

I might sit the world defying.

Through my mood, my state belying,

Learning gayly how to wait.

Hark! through all the crystal pauses

Breaks the treble of thy leaves;

Silverest of silvery noises,

Tapping at my cottage eaves.

When the wandering winds are tired

—

Till one more than half believes.

Sighs some weary-hearted Dryad

Whom the daily sun deceives.

Yet when morn is just beginning

To foretell its grand surprise.

Through thy boughs what chorus ringing,

What chatoyant splendors winging

—

Splendors caught from sunrise skies

Wedded with celestial singing—

Singing birds of Paradise.

For me, never, never lonely

Days nor nights, if thou wilt only

Not delay thy spring-tide budding.

Nor forget the June-day flooding

Of my ways with subtlest fragrance.

Calling home the winged vagrants

That from memory vanished quite

Out of hearing, out of sight.

Lose in the- uncertain distance

Claim to true shape or existence.

Through thy tendrils, sky-aspiring.

Leaving little for desiring.

Let me hear the tempest's choiring.

Mellowed to the flute's respiring:

Let the sunbeam's warm embrace

With thy being interlace.

Leading by a shining clew

Heavenward to the quiet blue

Let the rainbow's bridge of sighs.

Which the earth to heaven allies.

Touch thee into a disguise

Radiant as the dragon-fly's.

Can it be that storms may splinter

All thy strength some cruel winter?

That some wild and bleak New Year

Bring thee but a frozen tear;

So when little May winds shiver

Thou wilt make no answering quiver

Oh, be ever green and growing,

No repulse thy spirit knowing!

Like the noble Banyan tree

Tenant of the soil, but free!

With thy magic seed shed wide

On laden west-wind, laden tide,

Each ripe harvest loosely cast

And borne upon each flying blast.

Daily journey everywhere

That the great heroic dare.

Wandering now to farther Greenland

And the coasts of the Unseen land;

Into chilliest regions going

—

Regions of perpetual snowing;

Striking latitudes that smile

Into summer all the while.

Blown across the open sea

Of a vast humanity.

Where no other plant will flourish

Thou thy rarest blossoms nourish!

By the merest thread of bliss.

By a whisper, by a kiss.

Bid thy folded leaves expand,

Beautifying all the land.

In thy shade, that sunshine is.

Let me taste of happiness;

Oh, dear Romance, let me be

Evermore at home with thee!