112 
NATURE STUDY. 
A Twilight Moth. 
BY MADISON CAWEIN IN LIPPINCOTT’S. 
Dusk is thy dawn; when Eve puts on her state 
Of gold and purple in the marbled West, 
Thou comest forth like some embodied trait, 
Of dim conceit, a lily-bud confessed; 
Or, of a rose, the visible wish that, white, 
Goes messengering softly through the night, 
Whom each expectant flower makes it’s guest. 
All day the primroses have thought of thee, 
Their golden heads close haremed from the heat; 
All day the mystic moon-flowers’ silkenly 
Veiled snowy faces — that no bee might greet 
Or butterfly that, weighed with pollen, passed, 
Keeping Sultana charms for thee, at last, 
Their lord, who comes to salute each sweet. 
Cool heartedYlowers that avoid the day’s 
Too fervid kisses; each pale bud thatjdrinks 
The tipsy dew and to the starlight plays 
Nocturnes of fragrance, thy wing’d shadow links 
In bonds of secret brotherhood and faith; 
O bearer of their order’s shibboleth, 
Like some strange symbol fluttering o’er these pinks. 
What dost thou whisper in the balsam’s ear 
That sets it blushing ? or the holyhock’s 
Of syllabled silence, that mo man may hear, 
As dreamly upon its stem it rocks ? 
What spell dost bear from listening plant to plant 
Like some white witch, some ghostly ministrant, 
Some specter of some perished flower of phlox. 
O voyager of that universe which lies 
Between the four walls of this garden fair - A - 
Whose constellations are the fireflies 
That wheel their instant courses everywhere — 
’Mid fairy firmaments, wherein one sees 
Mimic Bootes and the Pleiades, 
Thou steerest like some elf ship-of-the-air. 
Gnome-wrought of moonbeam-fluff and gossamer 
Silent as scent, perhaps thou chariotest 
Mab or King Oberon; or, haply, her 
His queen, Titania, on some midnight quest, 
O for the herb, the magic euphrasy, 
That should unmask thee to mine eyes —ah me ! — 
And all that world at which my soul has guessed 
