The Complete Poems of Christina Rossetti A variorum edition: Edited, with textual notes and introductions, by R. W. Crump |
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 | The Complete Poems of Christina Rossetti |  |
Have Patience.
The goblets all are broken,The pleasant wine is spilt,
The songs cease; if thou wilt,
Listen, and hear truth spoken.
169
And know not we shall see it;
We look on death with sorrow,
And cannot flee it.
Youth passes like the lightning,
Not to return again;
Just for a little bright'ning
The confines of a plain;
Gilding the spires, and whitening
The grave-stones and the slain.
Youth passes like the odour
From the white rose's cup,
When the hot sun drinks up
The dew that overflowed her:
Then life forsakes the petals
That had been very fair;
No beauty lingers there,
And no bee settles.
But when the rose is dead,
And the leaves fallen;
And when the earth has spread
A snow-white pall on;
The thorn remains, once hidden
By the green growth above it;
A darksome guest unbidden,
With none to love it.
Manhood is turbulent,
And old age tires;
That, hath no still content,
This, no desires.
The present hath even less
Joy than the past,
And more cares fret it:—
Life is a weariness
From first to last:—
Let us forget it.
Fill high and deep:—but how?
The goblets all are broken.
170
For this is but a token
We soon shall have no need
Of such to cheer us:
The palm-branches, decreed,
And crowns, to be our meed,
Are very near us.
| The Complete Poems of Christina Rossetti | |