Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, LINES TO A NASTURTIUM (A LOVER MUSES), by ANNE SPENCER


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

LINES TO A NASTURTIUM (A LOVER MUSES), by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Flame-flower, day-torch, mauna loa
Last Line: Beating, beating.
Alternate Author Name(s): Bannister, Anne Bethel Scales
Subject(s): African Americans; African Americans - Women; Negroes; American Blacks


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.





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