The magical time of wild hyacinths is almost over for another year. Here are two poems on the theme of blue in nature. The first is a celebrated sonnet by Keats; the second a short, and typically original, reflection by New Englander Robert Frost.
SONNET, WRITTEN IN ANSWER TO
A SONNET ENDING THUS:
Dark eyes are dearer far
Than those that mock the hyacinthine bell. – J H Reynolds
~
Blue! ’Tis the life of heaven, – the domain
Of Cynthia, – the wide palace of the sun, –
The tent of Hesperus, and all his train, –
The bosomer of clouds, gold, grey and dun.
Blue! ’Tis the life of waters: – Ocean
And all its vassal streams, pools numberless,
May rage, and foam, and fret, but never can
Subside, if not to dark blue nativeness.
Blue! Gentle cousin of the forest-green,
Married to green in all the sweetest flowers, –
Forget-me-not, – the Blue Bell, – and, that Queen
Of secrecy, the Violet: what strange powers
Hast thou, as a mere shadow! But how great,
When in an Eye thou art, alive with fate!
FRAGMENTARY BLUE
Why make so much of fragmentary blue
In here and there a bird, or butterfly,
Or flower, or wearing-stone, or open eye,
When heaven presents in sheets the solid hue?
~
Since earth is earth, perhaps, not heaven (as yet) –
Though some savants make earth include the sky;
And blue so far above us comes so high,
It only gives our wish for blue a whet.
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