Kate Seymour MacLean: Forgotten Songs

“There is a splendid tropic flower which flings
Its fiery disc wide open to the core—
One pulse of subtlest fragrance—once a life
That rounds a century of blossoming things
And dies, a flower’s apotheosis: nevermore
To send up in the sunshine, in sweet strife
With all the winds, a fountain of life flame,
A winged censer in the starlight swung
Once only, flinging all its wealth abroad
To the wide deserts without shore or name
And dying, like a lovely song, once sung
By some dead poet, music’s wandering ghost,
Æons ago blown out of life and lost,
Remembered only in the heart of God.”