So many girls vague in the yielding orchard,
None at my pausing but had seemed therefore
To grow a little, to have put forth a tentative
Frond, touch my arm and, as we went,
Trailingly inquire, but smilingly, of the greenhouse
-One had heard so much, was it never to be seen?
So that it would always have appeared possible
To be distinguished under glass
Down ferned-faint-steaming alleys of lady-slipper,
Camellia, browning at the finger-tip,
Yet always to find oneself, with a trace of humor,
In perhaps the least impressive room.
It was hotter here than elsewhere, being shadowed
Only by bare panes overhead,
And here the seedlings had been set to breeding
Their small green tedium of need:
Each plant alike, each plaintively devouring
One form, meek sprout atremble in the glare
Of the ideal condition. So many women
Oval under overburdened limbs,
And such vague wants, each witlessly becoming
Desire, individual blossom
Inhaled but to enhance the fiercer fading
Of as yet nobody’s beauty, Tell me (I said)
Among these thousands which you are!
And I will lead you backwards where the wrench
Of rifling fingers snaps the branch,
And all loves less than the proud love fastened on
Suffer themselves to be rotted clean out of conscience
By human neglect, by the naked sun,
So none shall tempt, when she is gone.
The Greenhouse
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