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.