The Story
of Saville
And there lurked no hint of the forestal green nor yet of the limitless blue.
And then as they battled against the wind, sauntering to and fro,
She preached him a little sermon she had studied that day in Thoreau,
Her text, the chariot wheels of the storm, the six-spoked crystals of snow,
Those faceted glorious spangles, the sweepings of heaven’s floor,
Feathery petaled hexagonal flowers, diamond dusted o’er,—
Why, we are sprent with gems! they fall in a wavering thistledown blur,
In the gallery of the meadow mouse, on the restless squirrel’s fur,
The schoolboy crushes them into a ball, the woodman follows his sled
Through the wreck of a myriad fragile stars, strange as the stars o’erhead,—
And Oh! ’twere a blasphemy to declare by some cold narrowing word
Mechanical action got them: Divinity must have stirred
In the germ pellucid and gelid, and so have they come to be
