Flower o' the thorn :: :: University of Virginia Library

THE limes are out in bud:
Spring sends its rising thrill of rapture through their blood.
Each bare black branch, each twig, to-day is all beseen
With broidery of beads of faintest fairy green.
To-morrow, stem and bough, enveloped, like a bride,
In one vast virgin veil
Of tiny clustering leaves of tender emerald pale,
Each tree,
From middle trunk to crown, from side to spreading side,
To celebrate aright the coming of the King
And hail the happy year's new nuptials with the Spring,
Will be.

The limes are full in leaf:
The first are they to fill themselves at Summer's sheaf:
No tracery of twig, no black of stem or bark,
Now that the Maytide's here, to-day the eye can mark:
But every tree uprears one vast o'ervaulted dome
Of shimmering green and gold;
One canopy of leaf, most gracious to behold,
Wherethrough

The bated sunbeams stray and sport and glance and roam
And the glad eye looks up, following the golden gleam,
And spies, through webs of light, as in a fairy dream,
Heaven's blue.

The limes are full in flower.
It is the very top of July's rapturous hour.
O'er London's labouring streets the spreading branches hold
Their pendulous flower-spikes of palest perfumed gold
And daylong, nightlong, fill the shimmering summer air,
Whether the sun or moon
It be that overshines their sweetness, with their boon
Of breath,
Whose fragrance tells the tale of lands unearthly fair
And with its scent of myrrh and honey from our lot
Of sorrow lifts the soul to worlds where Life is not
Nor Death.

The limes are bare once more:
They cannot suffer life, once summertime is o'er:
So dear her love they hold, they may not bide their time
To drop, with other trees, their leaves at the first rime,
But orphaned of July and widowed of the Prime,
Before the Autumn's run
Half-way its destined course, ere yet their fellow trees,
Unbeggared of the blast, turn red and brown, one sees
Them cast
The honours of their heads and sorrowers for the sun,
Beneath the watchet dome of Autumn's paling scope,
Leafless and hoar they stand, like skeletons of hope
By-past.

Limes, you to me are dear:
I joy in your rebirth and grieve to see you sere.
You are to me the sign and symbol of my life,

That, once Love's Summer spent, disdains the idle strife
With other meaner goods its loss to compensate
And from the general stress
Withdrawn, its pride and pain in silence doth possess,
New birth
Content in this our world no longer to await,
But from our low estate, that unto death is bond,
Expecting for its Spring to bloom in spheres beyond
Our earth.