Read "Deserted" by Madison Cawein online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
/ A broken rainbow on the skies of May / Touching the sodden roses and low clouds, / And in wet clouds like scattered jewels lost: / Upon the heaven of a soul the ghost / Of a great love, perfect in its pure ray, / Touching the roses moist of memory / To die within the Present's grief of clouds -- / A broken rainbow on the skies of May.
/ A flashing humming-bird amid strange flowers, / Or red or white; its darting length of tongue / Sucking and drinking all the cell-stored sweet, / And now the surfeit and the hurried fleet: / A love that put into expanding bowers / Of one's large heart a tongue's persuasive powers / To cream with joy, and riffled, so was gone -- / A flashing humming-bird amid strange flowers.