The Fool

I saw the sunlight on a woman's hair;
I saw grey smoke shapes rising on the air;
And mottled shadows on a flowing stream;
And velvet lustrous in the firelight's gleam.

And then my ears were quickened and I heard
Ecstatic trillings of a distant bird,
And wondrous voices singing far away,
The love songs of an old romantic day.

And symphonies of fragrance drifted down
From unseen gardens. In a misty gown
Dew-gemmed, a dancer glided through thc trees
As light and careless as a springtime breeze.

But when I laughed and sang that I was glad,
Men harshly mocked and whispered:, he is mad.

^__Russell Culver.

Contemporary Kansas Poetry
Helen Rhoda Hoopes
page 37
(Kansas City: Joseph D. Havens Company. 1927)