The Sundew

A little marsh-plant, yellow green,

And pricked at lip with tender red.

Tread close, and either way you tread

Some faint black water jets between

Lest you should bruise the curious head.

A live thing maybe; who shall know?

The summer knows and suffers it;

For the cool moss is thick and sweet

Each side, and saves the blossom so

That it lives out the long June heat.

The deep scent of the heather burns

About it; breathless though it be,

Bow down and worship; more than we

Is the least flower whose life returns,

Least weed renascent in the sea.

We are vexed and cumbered in earths sight

With wants, with many memories;

These see their mother what she is,

Glad-growing, till August leave more bright

The apple-coloured cranberries.

Wind blows and bleaches the strong grass,

Blown all one way to shelter it

From trample of strayed kine, with feet

Felt heavier than the moorhen was,

Strayed up past patches of wild wheat.

You call it sundew: how it grows,

If with its colour it have breath,

If life taste sweet to it, if death

Pain its soft petal, no man knows:

Man has no sight or sense that saith.

My sundew, grown of gentle days,

In these green miles the spring begun

Thy growth ere April had half done

With the soft secret of her ways

Or June made ready for the sun.

O red-lipped mouth of marsh-flower,

I have a secret halved with thee.

The name that is loves name to me

Thou knowest, and the face of her

Who is my festival to see.

The hard sun, as thy petals knew,

Coloured the heavy moss-water:

Thou wert not worth green midsummer

Nor fit to live to August blue,

O sundew, not remembering her.