Page:Poems Barrett.djvu/230

      All the floor was paved with glory,—
      Greenly, silently inlaid,
      Through quick motions made before me,
      With fair counterparts in shade,
Of the fair serrated ivy-leaves which slanted overhead.

      "Is such pavement in a palace?"
      So I questioned in my thought:
      The sun, shining through the chalice
      Of the red rose hung without,
Threw within a red libation, like an answer to my doubt.

      At the same time, on the linen
      Of my childish lap there fell
      Two white may-leaves, downward winning
      Through the ceiling's miracle,
From a blossom, like an angel, out of sight yet blessing well.

      Down to floor and up to ceiling,
      Quick I turned my childish face;
      With an innocent appealing
      For the secret of the place,
To the trees which surely knew it, in partaking of the grace.

      Where's no foot of human creature,
      How could reach a human hand?
      And if this be work of nature,
      Why is nature sudden bland,
Breaking off from other wild work? It was hard to understand.

      Was she weary of rough-doing,
      Of the bramble and the thorn?
      Did she pause, in tender rueing,
      Here, of all her sylvan scorn?
Or, in mock of art's deceiving, was the sudden mildness worn?