<h2><SPAN name="chap22"></SPAN>CRETONNE TROPICS</h2>
<p class="poem">
The cretonne in your willow chair<br/>
Shows through a zone of rosy air,<br/>
A tree of parrots, agate-eyed,<br/>
With blue-green crests and plumes of pride<br/>
And beaks most formidably curved.<br/>
I hear the river, silver-nerved,<br/>
To their shrill protests make reply,<br/>
And the palm forest stir and sigh.<br/>
<br/>
Curious, the spell that colors cast,<br/>
Binding the fancy coweb-fast,<br/>
And you would smile if you could know<br/>
I like your cretonne parrots so!<br/>
But I have seen them sail toward night<br/>
Superbly homeward, the last light<br/>
Lifting them like a purple sea<br/>
Scorned and made use of arrogantly;<br/>
And I have heard them cry aloud<br/>
From out a tall palm’s emerald cloud;<br/>
And I brought home a brilliant feather,<br/>
Lost like a flake of sunset weather.<br/>
<br/>
Here in the north the sea is white<br/>
And mother-of-pearl in morning light,<br/>
Quite lovely, but there is a glare<br/>
That daunts me.<br/>
<br/>
Now the willow chair<br/>
Suggests a more perplexing sea,<br/>
Till my heart aches with memory<br/>
And parrots dye the air around,<br/>
And I forget the pallid Sound.<br/></p>
<p class="left">
GRACE HAZARD</p>
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