Lines to a Nasturtium, a poem by Anne Spencer

Lines to a Nasturtium

by Anne Spencer

A lover muses

Flame-flower, Day-torch, Mauna Loa,

I saw a daring bee, today, pause, and soar,

Into your flaming heart; 

Then did I hear crisp crinkled laughter

As the furies after tore him apart?

A bird, next, small and humming, 

Looked into your startled depths and fled...

Surely, some dread sight, and dafter

Than human eyes as mine can see,

Set the stricken air waves drumming

In his flight.

Day-torch, Flame-flower, cool-hot Beauty,

I cannot see, I cannot hear your fluty

Voice lure your loving swain,

But I know one other to whom you are in beauty

Born in vain;

Hair like the setting sun,

Her eyes a rising star,

Motions gracious as reeds by Babylon, bar

All your competing;

Hands like, how like, brown lilies sweet, 

Cloth of gold were fair enough to touch her feet...

Ah, how the senses flood at my repeating,

As once in her fire-lit heart I felt the furies

Beating, beating.

* Born in Virginia in 1882, Anne Spencer participated actively in the Harlem Renaissance movement. Before she died in 1975, she lived and wrote in Virginia. This poem is located in public domain.