8.10.13

botanica II [passion flowers] ...














The Passionfruits are flowering again in abundance, their perfume and nectar attracting any number of insects and birds, and their beauty ever demanding the attention of my eye and my camera...

Passion flowers... I first fell for the drama of Maud as a child and I do not care to argue that Tennyson is not a cool poet on whom to direct ones affections... He was my first poetic love, and Maud, his gothic romantic botanical drama that unfolds with perfect rhythm and meter continues to move me, decades after I first read it ...

Indulge me an except ... 


There has fallen a splendid tear
From the passion-flower at the gate.
She is coming, my dove, my dear;
She is coming, my life, my fate;
The red rose cries, 'She is near, she is near;'
And the white rose weeps, 'She is late;'
The larkspur listens, 'I hear, I hear;'
And the lily whispers, 'I wait.'

She is coming, my own, my sweet;
Were it ever so airy a tread,
My heart would hear her and beat,
Were it earth in an earthy bed;
My dust would hear her and beat,
Had I lain for a century dead;
Would start and tremble under her feet,
And blossom in purple and red.

[excerpt from Alfred Lord Tennyson Maud]



Fortunate am I; not only to have retained my childhood appreciation for this poem, but also the [now slightly weathered] volume of verse in which I first discovered it...







RELATED POSTS