Dancing Dust

Poems by Mollie Caird (1922-2000)

Fritillary
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Fields there are in Oxfordshire
Where cowslips grow, and strawberry,
And all the fragile brightness is
Of blackthorn and the wild white cherry,
But their enchantment cannot break
The spell of one fritillary.

For I beheld her where she grew,
And knew her as the serpent wise,
Mocking all the primroses
With slanting supercilious eyes,
Drooping her dusty-purple wings,
Spotted as a butterfly's.

I plucked her and put her in a glass,
And watched her dark rebellious sorrow,
Hoping, yet half fearing her
Symbolic of the world's tomorrow.


Undated, c1941