Deserted

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A broken rainbow on the skies of May
  Touching the sodden roses and low clouds,
  And in wet clouds like scattered jewels lost:
  Upon the heaven of a soul the ghost
  Of a great love, perfect in its pure ray,
  Touching the roses moist of memory
  To die within the Present's grief of clouds--
  A broken rainbow on the skies of May.

  A flashing humming-bird amid strange flowers,
  Or red or white; its darting length of tongue
  Sucking and drinking all the cell-stored sweet,
  And now the surfeit and the hurried fleet:
  A love that put into expanding bowers
  Of one's large heart a tongue's persuasive powers
  To cream with joy, and riffled, so was gone--
  A flashing humming-bird amid strange flowers.

  A foamy moon which thro' a night of fleece
  Moves amber girt into a bulk of dark,
  And, lost to eye, rims all the black with froth:
  A love of smiles, that, tinctured like a moth,
  Moved thro' a soul's night-dun and made a peace--
  More bland than Melancholy's white--to cease
  In blanks of Time zoned with pale Memory's spark--
  A foamy moon that brinks a storm with fleece.

  A blaze of living thunder--not a leap--
  Momental spouting balds the piléd storm,
  The ghastly mountains and the livid ocean,
  The pine-roared crag, then blots the sight's commotion:
  A love that swiftly pouring bared the deep,
  Which cleaves white Life from Death, Death from white Sleep,
  And, ceasing, gave a brain one blur of storm--
  Blank blast of midnight, love for Death and Sleep.

© Madison Julius Cawein