Edward Cracroft Lefroy: His Life and Poems including a Reprint of Echoes from Theocritus: By Wilfred Austin Gill: With a Critical Estimate of the Sonnets by the late John Addington Symonds |
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 | Edward Cracroft Lefroy: His Life and Poems |  |
LXXX
A DISCIPLE SECRETLY, II
Nay, surely; Love must know her times, and whom
She will, confesses. Can the budding flower,
When hasty fingers break it unto bloom,
Match the bright offspring of a natural hour,
That warmed by sun, and woke by sudden shower,
Expands full-orbed? Albeit, if subtle doom
Eclipse its beauty unfulfilled, no power
Shall curl its petals skyward from the tomb.
I did not speak. Is that a reasoned grief,
Now chance of speech is gone, for ever gone?
What could I give? A flower in broken leaf,
A thing his eye would scarcely gaze upon,
And Head had cried to Heart, “O foolish Thief
To steal what should be fairly thine anon!”
| Edward Cracroft Lefroy: His Life and Poems | |