[Editor: This poem by Mary Eliza Fullerton was published in Moods and Melodies: Sonnets and Lyrics (1908).]
Colour. — I.
How Form and Shape from raw confusion grew,
Old Writ records; but not His act more slow
When from the phials He made the Colours flow:
“Let there be Beauty”; and the silent dew,
The tonic earth, exhaled the varied hue;
Flowers felt the breath of kindling airs ablow,
And danced elate in carnival of glow,
While grey Shapes flamed incarnadine and blue.
The bold young sun in new meridian,
Wooed maiden Nature, and the hearts of flowers,
And spory weeds; brute creatures dull and wan,
Followed the influence of the mingled powers,
And took their glow and tone, the while there ran
Young reeling Earth along her early hours.
Source:
Mary E. Fullerton, Moods and Melodies: Sonnets and Lyrics, Melbourne: Thomas C. Lothian, 1908, p. 14
Editor’s notes:
incarnadine = a blood-red colour, like that of raw flesh; a pinkish-red colour, like that of flesh (of European/White people); a bright crimson colour (derived from the Latin “incarnari”, “be made flesh”, from the Latin root “carn”, meaning “flesh”); may also mean: to redden
spory = considerable, largish; the quality or state of having spores
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