Page:Poems Scudder.djvu/55

You see in antique shops with greenish, wrinkled
Glass—and above it is a queer old painting
In boldest colors of the Bay of Naples.
I wonder if they sit up late at night
Reading—between them in its silver holder
Burns a tall candle, and they nibble cakes,
And sip each from a tiny gilded tumbler
Of orange-flower water. Once I read
In an old book of a tall gilded bottle
Of orange-flower water—and the cool
Sweet sound of it possessed me then and ever
—Yes, I would love to follow the dear ladies
And see their home—but I will never try it
For fear things might not be just as I've dreamt them.

MYSTERY

Thus runs the legend. Once a king
 Had led a desert chase in hope
 Of prey—gazelle or antelope,
Leopard or lion, doth not sing
The perished bard who tells the thing—
 But that at noon the hunt was stayed
 Where in the ragged palm-trees' shade
Babbled and purled a cooling spring.

A bowshot off but full in view
 The ruins of a city showed
 Above the drifted sand and glowed
In that fierce sun with every hue
Of violet and vermeil and blue,
 Of carbuncle and cornelian
 And eastern lapis. And they knew
A tale which made it the abode

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