THE CASKET OF OPALS

Deep, smoldering colors of the land and sea

Burn in these stones, that, by some mystery,

Wrap fire in sleep and never are consumed.

Scarlet of daybreak, sunset gleams half spent

In thick white cloud; pale moons that may have lent

Light to love's grieving; rose-illumined snows,

And veins of gold no mine depth ever gloomed;

All these, and green of thin-edged waves, are there.

I think a tide of feeling through them flows

With blush and pallor, as if some being of air,—

Some soul once human,— wandering, in the snare

Of passion had been caught, and henceforth doomed

In misty crystal here to lie entombed.

And so it is, indeed. Here prisoned sleep

The ardors and the moods and all the pain

That once within a man's heart throbbed. He gave

These opals to the woman whom he loved;

And now, like glinting sunbeams through the rain,

The rays of thought that through his spirit moved

Leap out from these mysterious forms again.

The colors of the jewels laugh and weep

As with his very voice. In them the wave

Of sorrow and joy that, with a changing sweep,

Bore him to misery or else made him blest

Still surges in melodious, wild unrest.

So when each gem in place I touch and take,

It murmurs what he thought or what he spake.