Once a pallid Vestal Doubted truth in blue Listed red in ruin, Harried every hue Barricaded vision, Garbed herself in sighs Ridiculed the birthmarks Of the butterflies.

The sign work of the Orient it runneth up and down The Talmud stalks from right to left, a rabbi in a gown The Roman rolls from left to right from Maytime unto May But the gods shake up their symbols in an absent-minded way. Their language runs to circles like the language of the eyes, Emphasised by strange dilations with little panting sighs.

The world is growing gentle, But few know what she owes To the understanding lily And the judgment of the rose.

A precious place is Paradise and none may know its worth, But Eden ever longeth for the knicknacks of the earth. The angels grow quite wistful over worldly things below They hear the hurdy-gurdies in the Candle Makers Row. They listen for the laughter from the antics of the earth They lower pails from heaven's walls to catch the milk-maids mirth.

The starry brocade of the summer night Is linked to us as part of our estate And every bee that wings its sidelong flight Assurance of a sweeter, fairer fate.

In the darkness, who would answer for the color of a rose, Or the vestments of the May moth and the pilgrimage it goes?

The sun shall shine in ages yet to be, The musing moon illumine pastures dim, And afterwards a new nativity For all who slept the dreamless interim.

I linger on the flathouse roof, the moonlight is divine. But my heart is all aflutter like the washing on the line.

There is a glory in a great mistake.

The rose has told In one simplicity That never life Relinquishes a bloom But to bestow An ancient confidence.

Oh I'm in love with the janitor's boy, And the janitor's boy loves me He's going to hunt for a desert isle In our geography.

Across the downs a hummingbird Came dipping through the bowers, He pivoted on emptiness To scrutinize the flowers.

The very serpents bite their tails the bees forget to sting, For a language so celestial setteth up a wondering. And the touch of absent mindedness is more than any line, Since direction counts for nothing when the gods set up a sign.