Explore "The Opal Month" by Virna Sheard on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Now cometh October -- a nut-brown maid, / Who in robes of crimson and gold arrayed / Hath taken the king's highway! / On the world she smiles -- but to me it seems / Her eyes are misty with mid-summer dreams, / Or memories of the May.
Opals agleam in the dusk of her hair / Flash their hearts of fire and colours rare / As she dances gaily by -- / Yet she sighs for each empty swinging nest, / And she tenderly holds against her breast / A belated butterfly.
The crickets sing no more to the stars -- / The spiders no more put up silver bars / To entangle silken wings; / But the quail pipes low in the rusted corn, / And here and there -- both at night and at morn -- / A lonely robin still sings.
A spice-laden breeze of the south is blent / With perfumed winds from the Orient / And they weave o'er her a spell, / For nun-like she goeth now, still and sweet -- / And while mists like incense curl at her feet, / She lingers her beads to tell.