Mute Prophets

The tender heavens of warm mid-May
     Were bending over earth and sea;
A soft, mysterious purple lay
On shimmering headlands far away,
     A green gold on the neighboring lea.

Sown thickly in my scant domain
     The dazzling dandelions grew,
As if great drops of golden rain
Had fallen over all the plain,
     Innumerous as the starry dew.

If fairies be not flown from earth
     These were their burnished shields I saw,
Tossed gaily in their May moon mirth,
Upon a glad foray set forth
     To bring dull clods to beauty’s law,

No shield was lowered, no lance withdrawn
     In all their nightly bivouac;
One front to moonlight and in dawn
They turned and made my sheltered lawn
     The camping ground of bloom come huck. 

But something in the heart of things 
     Lives, more than mystic fay or elf;
Swifter than nimblest feet or wing,
To every opening bud it brings
     An aim beyond its rooted self ——

A yearning from its sunny now
     To summer futures all unknown:
A will to fly, it feels not how
Nor whither—as the heavens allure 
     Who shape the wing and way, alone.

I watched my foundlings growing old,
     Another blooming, white as snow,
Displaced the myriad discs of gold
With feathered globes, whose slender hold
     Scarce waited for a breeze to blow.

A zephyr touched them with his wing,
     And taught each plumed seed to fly:
It rose as ‘twere a conscious thing,
Poised on its parachute, to fling
     Its life on dark futurity.

Another golden May shall tell 
     The secret of that feathered germ,
That, knowing naught, was fashioned well,
Well guided to some dewy dell,
     Its lifeward yearning to confirm.