Classic Poem

How beautiful is our palace of habitation
Which the sun delights to illumine.
Not only the over-arching skies,
The wide-spreading sea
The Desert with towering clouds
And engirdling mountains,
But the carefully painted wildcat,
The striped skunk, the spotted fawn,
Kittens and puppies,
All soft, helpless young things,
Butterflies, winged-flowers,
And humming-birds, jewels of the air,
Green beetles, with emerald backs;
Coral lady-bugs, enameled with black spots;
Carefully touched by the artist.
The pigeon's lustrous neck, the pheasant's breast;
The jay-bird's wing; the blackbird's back;
And the peacock, spreading for love's sake
A royal screen painted by the Master with lapis and emerald;
A baby's foot, pink as shells
Which have caught the dye of sunset;
Corals and seaweeds,
Fishes fantastic,
Which swam through a rainbow.
Steaming, new-plowed fields and the dark loam
Of the forest are wonderful also.
Leaves, blossoms, flowers, skies and cobwebs;
The illimitable Evening and Morning,
And the illimitable diamonds which frost
Hangs upon wintry boughs.
The Universe as much within a frost-crystal
As in the constellations which cover the night
With their patterns.