TO AN IRIS
By Bliss Carman
THOU art a golden iris
Under a purple wall,
Whereon the burning sunlight
And greening shadows fall.
What Summer night's enchantment
Took up the garden mould,
And with the falling star-dust
Refined it to such gold?
What wonder of white magic,
Bidding thy soul aspire,
Filled that luxurious body
With languor and with fire?
Wert thou not once a beauty
In Persia or Japan,
For whom, by toiling seaway
Or dusty caravan,
Of old some lordly lover
Brought countless treasure home,
Of gems and silk and attar,
To pleasure thee therefrom?
Pale amber from the Baltic,
Soft rugs of Indian ply,
Stuffs from the looms of Bagdad
Stained with the Tyrian dye.
Were thy hands bright with henna,
Thy lashes black with kohl,
Thy voice like silver water
Out of an earthen bowl?
Or was thy only tent-cloth
The blue Astartean night,
Thy soul to beauty given,
Thy body to delight?
Wert thou not well desired,
And was not life a boon,
When Tanis held in Sidon
Her Mysteries of the Moon?
There in her groves of ilex
The nightingales made ring
With the mad lyric chorus
Of youth and love and Spring,
