Florence Wilkinson Evans

THE LITTLE Broadway fruit-shop bursts and glows

Like a stained-glass window rioting through the gloom

Of a grim façade; a garden over seas;

A Syracusan idyl; a lilt that flows

In chords of dusk-red colour; emerald bloom

Loved by the nightingale, voice of the voiceless trees;

Ripe orchards mellow with innumerable bees.

A dark Greek boy counts up with supple hands

Lucent rotundities, the Bacchic grape

In luscious pyramids, pears like a lute

Most musically carved, nuts from sweet lands

Demeter lost; oh, many a sculptured shape;—

Had he his panther-skin, the thyrsus and the flute,—

Lo, a swart faun-god mid his votive fruit.