After Paradise or Legends of Exile With Other Poems: By Robert, Earl of Lytton (Owen Meredith) |
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 | After Paradise or Legends of Exile |  |
216
Beneath a dead bird's long-uncared-for cage,
That hangs forgotten in the cloister'd court
Of some lone uninhabitable house,
From the chink'd pavement slowly creeping comes
A thin weak stem that opens like a heart,
And puts forth tenderly two tiny hands
Of benediction to that cage forlorn,
Then dies, as tho' its little life had done
All it was born to do. The flint-set earth
Requites the dead bird's gift—one casual seed,
And from her stony breast a blossom blows.
That hangs forgotten in the cloister'd court
Of some lone uninhabitable house,
From the chink'd pavement slowly creeping comes
A thin weak stem that opens like a heart,
And puts forth tenderly two tiny hands
Of benediction to that cage forlorn,
Then dies, as tho' its little life had done
All it was born to do. The flint-set earth
Requites the dead bird's gift—one casual seed,
And from her stony breast a blossom blows.
But, pouring forth Uranian star-seed, strew
Incipient heavens thro' all the hollowness
Of human gratitude for gifts divine,
And nothing from the sowing of such seed
Shall blossom but the bitterness of death. [OMITTED]
Incipient heavens thro' all the hollowness
Of human gratitude for gifts divine,
And nothing from the sowing of such seed
Shall blossom but the bitterness of death. [OMITTED]
| After Paradise or Legends of Exile | |