All Silver-Laced With Web

All silver-laced with web and crystal-studded,
Hangs a golden lily cup,
As airy as a dancing sprite.
The moon hath caught a fleeting cloud
And rests in her embrace. The bumblefly
Still hovers o'er the clover flower,
And mimics all the zephyr's song.
White butterflies, whose wings bespeak
Late wooing of the buttercup,
Wend home their way, the gold still clinging
To their snowy gossamer.
E'en the toad, who old and moss-grown seems,
Is wabbled on a lilypad, and watches for
The moon to bid the cloud adieu
And light him to his hunt for fickle marshflies
Who tease him through the day.
Why, every rose has loosed her petals,
And sends a pleading perfume to the moss
That creeps upon the maple's stalk,
To tempt it hence to bear a cooling draught.
Round yonder trunk the ivy clings
And loves it into green. The pansy dreams
Of coaxing goldenrod to change her station,
Lest her modest flower be ever doomed
To blossom neath the shadow of the wall.
And was not He who touched the pansy with
His regal robes and left their color there,
All-wise to leave her-modesty as
Her greatest charm? Here snowdrops blossom
'Neath a fringe of tuft, and fatty grubs
Find rest amid the mold.
All love, and Love himself, is here-
For every garden is fashioned by his hand.
Are then the garden's treasures more of worth
Than ugly toad or mold? Not so, for Love
May tint the zincy blue-grey murk of
Curdling fall to crimson light-flashed summertide.
Ah, why then question Love, I prithee, friend?