DESERTED.

A broken rainbow on the skies of May

Touching the sodden roses and low clouds,

And in wet clouds like scattered jewels lost:

Upon the heaven of a soul the ghost

Of a great love, perfect in its pure ray,

Touching the roses moist of memory

To die within the Present's grief of clouds —

A broken rainbow on the skies of May.

A flashing humming-bird amid strange flowers,

Or red or white; its darting length of tongue

Sucking and drinking all the cell-stored sweet,

And now the surfeit and the hurried fleet:

A love that put into expanding bowers

Of one's large heart a tongue's persuasive powers

To cream with joy, and riffled, so was gone —

A flashing humming-bird amid strange flowers.

A foamy moon which thro’ a night of fleece

Moves amber girt into a bulk of dark,

And, lost to eye, rims all the black with froth:

A love of smiles, that, tinctured like a moth,

Moved thro’ a soul's night-dun and made a peace —

More bland than Melancholy's white — to cease

In blanks of Time zoned with pale Memory's spark —

A foamy moon that brinks a storm with fleece.

A blaze of living thunder — not a leap —

Momental spouting balds the piled storm,

The ghastly mountains and the livid ocean,

The pine-roared crag, then blots the sight's commotion:

A love that swiftly pouring bared the deep,

Which cleaves white Life from Death, Death from white Sleep,

And, ceasing, gave a brain one blur of storm —

Blank blast of midnight, love for Death and Sleep.