HELIOTROPE
That floats in tremulous languor
Around this darling of mine.
For, only yester-even,
I saw the dearest scene!
I heard the delicate footfall,
The step of my love, my queen.
Along the walk she glided:
I made no sound nor sign,
But ever, at the turning
Of her star-white neck divine,
I shrunk in the shade of the cypress,
And crouched in the swooning grass,
Like some Arcadian shepherd
To see an Oread pass.
But when she came to the border
At the end of the garden-slope,
She bent, like a rose-tree, over
That beautiful Heliotrope.
The cloud of its subtile fragrance
Entwined her in its wreath,
And all the while commingled
With the incense of her breath.
And so she glistened onward,
Far down the long parterre,
Beside the statue of Hesper,
And a hundred times more fair.
But ah! her breath had added
The perfume that I find
In this, the sweetest of flowerets,
And the paragon of its kind.
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