Nature-notes and impressions : in prose and verse / by Madison Cawein [electronic text]

In the careless shadow of a flowering tree she sat—a witch whiter than a windflower. Her song was all of poison,—hemlock,— the squeezing

of the dark juice through white fingers. A sound as of owlet wings kept time to her wild singing. At her feet lay a youth with closed eyes, whose lips and forehead she kissed repeatedly, each kiss leaving a mark as of a serpent's fang. He was dead, and yet he seemed to live, his heart and soul, through her kisses, ashes and dust within him. His face was pinched into smiles that were not smiles. She laughed, and beneath her laugh the monkshood and nightshade covered themselves with poison-dripping blossoms, and the wild-rose was slimed with snails.