Wings Poem by Katharine Lee Bates

GRAY gulls that wheeled and dipped and rose
Where tossing crests like Alpine snows
Would shimmer and entice;
A stormy petrel, Judas soul,
Dark wanderer of the waste, whose goal
No mariner hath seen;
And flaming from the vanished sun
A wondrous wing vermilion,
A bird of Paradise,
A soaring wing that shone so far
The orient horizon bar
Flushed, and the sea between
Like an Arabian carpet glowed
With changeful hues where subtly flowed
Some magical device;
And one pale plume in heaven's dim dome
Above that fairy-colored foam,
The new moon's ghostly sheen.