Poppy Dreams video

Poppy For Remembrance. . . "The Poppy" Summer set lip to earth's bosom bare, And left the flush'd print in a poppy there; Like a yawn of fire from the grass it came, And the fanning wind puff'd it to flapping flame. With burnt mouth red like a lion's it drank The blood of the sun as he slaughter'd sank, And dipp'd its cup in the purpurate shine When the eastern conduits ran with wine. Till it grew lethargied with fierce bliss, And hot as a swinked gipsy is, And drowsed in sleepy savageries, With mouth wide a-pout for a sultry kiss. A child and man paced side by side, Treading the skirts of eventide; But between the clasp of his hand and hers Lay, felt not, twenty wither'd years. She turn'd, with the rout of her dusk South hair, And saw the sleeping gipsy there; And snatch'd and snapp'd it in swift child's whim, With--'Keep it, long as you live!'--to him. And his smile, as nymphs from their laving meres, Trembled up from a bath of tears; And joy, like a mew sea-rock'd apart, Toss'd on the wave of his troubled heart. For he saw what she did not see, That--as kindled by its own fervency-- The verge shrivell'd inward smoulderingly: And suddenly 'twixt his hand and hers He knew the twenty wither'd years-- No flower, but twenty shrivell'd years. 'Was never such thing until this hour,' Low to his heart he said; 'the flower Of sleep brings wakening to me, And of oblivion memory.' 'Was never this thing to me,' he said, 'Though with bruised poppies my feet are red!' And again to ...