The Mind

Maidenhair

by Michael Field 1846–1914 (Bradley) and 1862–1913 (Cooper)

From A Selection from the Poems of Michael Field (1923)

The Mind

Plato of the clear, dreaming eye and brave
Imaginings, conceived, withdrawn from light.
The hollow of man's heart even as a cave.
With century-slow dropping stalactite
My heart was dripping tedious in despair.
But yesterday, awhile before I slept:
I wake to find it live with maidenhair
And mosses to the spiky pendants crept.
Great prodigies there are — Jehovah's flood
Widening the margin of the Red Sea shore, —
Great marvel when the moon is turned to blood
It is to mortals, yet I marvel more
At the soft rifts, the pushings at my heart.
That lift the great stones of its rock apart.

✦ ✦ ✦

From Wild Honey, as marked in the 1923 Selection.

MLA

Field, Michael. “Maidenhair.” Poetry Codex, poetrycodex.com/poem/field_m/192/.

Chicago

Field, Michael. “Maidenhair.” Poetry Codex. https://poetrycodex.com/poem/field_m/192/.

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