Tulips

An age being mathematical, these flowers

Of linear stalks and spheroid blooms were prized

By men with wakened, speculative minds,

And when with mathematics they explored

The Macrocosm, and came at last to

The Vital Spirit of the World, and named it

Invisible Pure Fire, or, say, the Light,

The Tulips were the Light's receptacles.

The gold, the bronze, the red, the bright-swart Tulips!

No emblems they for us who no more dream

Of mathematics burgeoning to light

With Newton's prism and Spinoza's lens,

Or berkeley's ultimate, Invisible Pure Fire.

In colored state and carven brilliancy

We see them now, or, more illumined,

In sudden fieriness, as flowers fit

To go with vestments red on Pentecost.