Wantons ye are to madden so the bees
Drunk with your dripping sweetness through long hours
Of shimmering honey-gold! There are no flowers
Dappling the green of any sort of trees
Can match your blaze of scarlet ecstasies.
Wantons ye are, indeed, whom Nature dowers
With greater wealth than heaped Old Persia's bowers
Or ripened for remote Hesperides.
In time to come (they say) shall trees no more
Foam up in sudden beauty, nor the furze
With yellow flecks of it be scattered o'er.
Nor bees nor moths be Cupid's messengers.
How in that day would tender souls be hurled
Back to this era from a blossomless world!
First published in The Bulletin, 29 June 1922
Author: Louis Lavater (1867-1953) was born in St Kilda, Victoria, and entered the University of Melbourne to study medicine. He did not finish his degree deciding instead to follow his love of music. He was active in Melbourne literary circles and, while he did not write a lot of poetry, his work was appreciated by those who knew him. He died in St Kilda in 1953.
Author reference sites: Austlit, Australian Dictionary of Biography
Drunk with your dripping sweetness through long hours
Of shimmering honey-gold! There are no flowers
Dappling the green of any sort of trees
Can match your blaze of scarlet ecstasies.
Wantons ye are, indeed, whom Nature dowers
With greater wealth than heaped Old Persia's bowers
Or ripened for remote Hesperides.
In time to come (they say) shall trees no more
Foam up in sudden beauty, nor the furze
With yellow flecks of it be scattered o'er.
Nor bees nor moths be Cupid's messengers.
How in that day would tender souls be hurled
Back to this era from a blossomless world!
First published in The Bulletin, 29 June 1922
Author: Louis Lavater (1867-1953) was born in St Kilda, Victoria, and entered the University of Melbourne to study medicine. He did not finish his degree deciding instead to follow his love of music. He was active in Melbourne literary circles and, while he did not write a lot of poetry, his work was appreciated by those who knew him. He died in St Kilda in 1953.
Author reference sites: Austlit, Australian Dictionary of Biography
