A FLORIDA INTERLUDE

Behind me lie the Everglades,

The mystic grassy Everglades,

Where the moccasin and the Seminole glide

In secret silent Indian ways.

Before me lies the Gulf,

The cup of blue bright tropic waters,

Held to the parched lips of the South

To cool and quench its thirst.

Behind me lie the Everglades,

Before me lies the Gulf,

Which the sunset soon shall change to wine,

A Eucharist for the longing soul.

Its rim of land shall be transformed

To Mexic opal and chrysoprase,

And then shall come the moon

As calm as a thought of Christ.

As calm as a thought of Christ —

Over the cup's sand-rim enchased

With palm and pine, Floridian friends,

Saying their twilight litanies;

While homeward flies the heron

To his island cypress in the swamp,

Which Spanish mosses drape and the moon

Silverly soothes to peace.

Behind me lie the Everglades,

Where the bittern wails to the moon's face.

Peace is gone as I wake

And memory in me wails

From the primal swamp, Heredity,

Whence I have come with all the desires

Of creeping, walking, flying things,

To creep or walk or fly.

With all the desires of the earth-creatures;

Yet with a want transcendent,

A want that comes with the glimmer of stars

And pierces to my heart.

A want of the life I have not known,

Of the life unknowable,

In the Everglades of the Universe

Where the Great Spirit glides.