Explore "Magnolia Gardens. a Prose-Poem" by Hervey Allen on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
In the spring when the first midges dance and warm days lure the / last-year's butterfly, the scarlet of the cardinals begins to flicker / through the ivory smoke of the mosses. Then the alligator leaves his / winter ooze, and the widening "O" of the ripple which his gar-like nose / makes, travels slowly across the sullen ponds, where the pendant / gonfalons of the mosses kiss their imaginary duplicates, hanging head / downward in the red water.
When the first frog honks with the bull-voiced trumpet of resurgent / spring, the jasmine rings its little hawk-bells, golden harp notes / through the forest; and the usurping wistaria assumes the purple, / reigning imperial and alone, flaunting its _palidementum_ in a cascade / of lilac amid the matrix of the mosses. Its sleek, muscular vine-arms / writhe round the clasped bodies of live oaks as if two lovers slept / beneath a cloak, and the cloisonne pavilion of their dalliance drips a / blue-glaze of shadows overhead.