Knee Deep In Violets

This life, though it is hard, is God’s will for me…
which is more than violets knee-deep --- G. M. Hopkins

Then the hell with God, let ‘em bloom!
No sanctimonious tearsainted cadences,
willowsweet weepings in widowweed winter

but exuberant June
and perpetual petalfresh sunshining showers,
and endless kaleidoscope wanderings,

knee deep in violets, racing naked and radiant
down paths of pure primrose
through windwaving crocusred acres

and fanfares of blossoming bluebells
still ringing the changes on lightdripping days
with their warm perfumed chimes,

their clear carillons candling air
while the whole golden world slowly turns,
softly burns under tangerine suns.

Such sounds! Such sights! Such scents!
Such violet views and violet nights
of starsoaked skies and muskbright seas,

of moonshining pearls dropped
in lilysprigged chalices, orchiddrenched pledges
in nectar from closeclustered lilacs,

the ivory savor of ivygreen jasmined imaginings
burning in eveningblue urns, incense sprinkled
on murmuring angelhair harpstrings

and whisperings, silken and spicesoft, of revelries,
rainbowed and fragrant, till finally lotuslulled,
sleeplapped in infinite daisychain dreamings.

And then to awaken unwearied again
to the glories of morning, the first day of summer,
unstained and singing, to wonder worlds

rimmed nimbly, in a wheel slowly spinning,
with the lifegiving hands of a god
and a lover’s wide eyes, wading knee deep in violets.