An Actor's Reminiscences and Other Poems By George Barlow |
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SONNET I.
“NO LILY IS WHITER.”
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 | An Actor's Reminiscences and Other Poems |  |
79
SONNET I. “NO LILY IS WHITER.”
No lily is whiter now for Christ or Keats.—
No blue-bell lifts within green woods a head
Tenderer, for æons of the heroic dead:—
Within the sea no pulse of Shelley beats.
Ten thousand years ago the rose was red;
To-day's rose merely the same tale repeats;
Where hearts have travailed and torn souls have bled,
The white wild pangless rose the June-morn greets!
No blue-bell lifts within green woods a head
Tenderer, for æons of the heroic dead:—
Within the sea no pulse of Shelley beats.
Ten thousand years ago the rose was red;
To-day's rose merely the same tale repeats;
Where hearts have travailed and torn souls have bled,
The white wild pangless rose the June-morn greets!
Not for one word that Christ or Milton spake
Is any blossom fairer. Their soft bloom
By ripples of the Galilean lake
Was nurtured, and they laughed round Milton's tomb;
But if no human voice earth's primal air
Had thrilled, no rosebud would have shone less fair.
Is any blossom fairer. Their soft bloom
By ripples of the Galilean lake
Was nurtured, and they laughed round Milton's tomb;
But if no human voice earth's primal air
Had thrilled, no rosebud would have shone less fair.
Nov. 2, 1881.
| An Actor's Reminiscences and Other Poems | |