Florida at Dawn

Will Wallace Harney

 

The moon is low in the sky,

And a sweet south wind is blowing

Where the bergamot blossoms breathe and die

In the orchard’s scented snowing;

But the stars are few, and scattered lie

Where the sinking moon is going.

 

With a love-sweet ache a strain

Of the night’s delicious fluting

Strs in the heart, with as sweet a pain

As the flower feels in fruiting,

And the soft air breathes a breath of rain

Over buds and tendril shooting.

 

For the sweet nights faints and dies,

Like the blush when love confesses

Its passion dusk to the cheeks and eyes

And dies in its sweet distresses,

And the radiant mystery fills the skies

Of possible happinesses,

 

Till the sun breakes out on sheaves

And mouths of a pink perfume,

Where the milky bergamot shakes its leaves;

And the rainbow’s ribboned bloom,

Of the soft gray mist of the morning, weaves

A rose in the rose’s loom.

 

The fog, like a great white cloth,

Draws out the orchard and corn,

And melts away in a film of froth

Like the milk spray on the thorn;

And out of her chamber’s blush and loath,

Like a bride, comes the girlish morn.

 

While Backus’s painting depicts dawn in the rough piney backwoods of Florida, Harney’s poem describes a southern morning breaking over corn fields and banks of fragrant bergamot.