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The Complete Poems of Christina Rossetti

A variorum edition: Edited, with textual notes and introductions, by R. W. Crump

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319

[The Passion Flower hath sprung up tall]

The Passion Flower hath sprung up tall,
Hath east and west its arms outspread;
The heliotrope shoots up its head
To clear the shadow of the wall:
Down looks the Passion Flower,
The heliotrope looks upward still,
Hour by hour
On the heavenward hill.
The Passion Flower blooms red or white,
A shadowed white, a cloudless red;
Caressingly it droops its head,
Its leaves, its tendrils, from the light:
Because that lowlier flower
Looks up, but mounts not half so high,
Hour by hour
Tending toward the sky.