Charles Erskine Scott Wood

WHAT is Life?

To me, life is to sit on these stone steps

Under the peach-tree, eating green almonds,

Watching the indolent shadow arabesques

Shift on the terrace;

While you couch on the coping of the steps

On cushions of velvet from old Venice,

Reading Endymion.

Up from the city far below

Comes the noon-scream of whistles.

I watch the shadows of the slim peach-leaves,

Gently finger your brown, soft-coiled hair,

And know the sun is in love.

Suddenly a lustrous humming-bird

Poises under the bell of a fuchsia flower,

His green back shimmering opal fire.

He hangs there a moment, a jewel, suspended from nothing—

How can his wings move so fast?

He is gone.

Sun-god, are you a mechanic, a painter, designer?

A yellow butterfly wanders aimlessly,

So it seems to me, among the red geraniums.

It is gone.

The fuchsias are gouts of blood;

The geraniums are leaping flames.

You couch on the coping of the steps

On cushions of velvet of old Venice:

And I am suspended before you a moment.

This to me is life.

It is gone.