University of Virginia Library

Mother of millions, thou dear Earth
What joy is like the rose's birth?
What time the holy nightingale
Had hushed her, and the stars grew pale,
The light wind-herald of the morn,
Whispered, A rose is to be born!
A dream first stirred my dreamless sleep,
As life came to me from the deep.
Then, brightening as the earth ran round
To meet the life-giver, the sun,
Came clearer sense of sight and sound;
And shadows of the shapes around,
The trees, the grasses on the ground,
My own leaves one by one,
Pierced the green curtains of my husk,
And shaped my dreaming in the dusk.
Silently from the oak-tree's crown
A golden-footed beam stole down;
It touched the topmost briar, it kissed
My tender bud, and like a mist
Fled dreams and night away;
My heart had opened ere I wist
To welcome the warm ray;
And blushing with the bliss of birth
I lay the fairest thing on earth
Upon earth's fairest day.

Ah, how can any language tell,
For eyes that have not seen to see,
The gladness of that place, the spell
On grass and flower and tree?
It was a long scarce-trodden lane,
With tender grasses half o'ergrown,
And flowers that never felt the pain
Of the sheer-falling, wounding rain,
But drank the gentle mists alone
That stole there when the rain was done.
That hallowed ground with leafy roof
'Gainst rain and burning sun was proof.
Light wands of hazel, pillar-wise,
Bore up o'er-arching traceries,
Green, shadowy, pierced with shining eyes.
And, seen beneath the fretted eaves,
When the light wind went by,
Through fluttering lattice of the leaves
Were morsels of the sky,
Like shadow-weaving of the waves
On shoals where moonbeams lie.
With many a sister-rose I hung
On a lithe briar that climbed and clung
About the hazels high;
Here a long bough with blossoms swung
The tall grass stems anigh,
Now lowly loved the bank, and now
Tossed wreath on wreath up, careless how,
Only to touch the topmost bough
And fearless face the sky.
The hyacinth was at our feet;
And honeysuckle, nectar-sweet,
Wreathed many an odorous bloom with ours,
A flower-crown for the queen of flowers.
Red fox-gloves on the banks below
Stood stately, like a royal show;
Where wealthy bees in furs and gold
Climbed heavily each honied hold,
Then whirring off on sudden wing
Set all the blooms like bells aswing.

So half the day in happy pride
And pure delight to Be,
I lived, nor looked beyond, beside
This life, nor hoped for joy more wide
Nor feared for joy to flee;
Happy to feel the shadows glide
Across my face at hot noontide,
Or the light wind from side to side
Sway my light briar and me.
And hour by hour, my ripening breast
Delight more wonderful possessed.

About me at the busy noon
The wild bee droned his drowsy tune,
And many a winged adventurer
My silken lip did lightly stir.
I heeded not—my heart was mine;
The dew they drank, but not the wine.
Till like a wind-borne leaf went by
On rainbow wings a butterfly.
Through shadow and shafts of sun he came,
Flickering like a coloured flame;
His plumes, resplendent from the husk,
Enlightened all the leafy dusk.
But when he saw our blossoms white
Hang half-transparent in the light,
He left the foxglove on the bank,
The common campion, red and rank,
And spread his gleaming wings elate
To seek delights more delicate.
He hovered o'er each pink-white petal,
And joyed in each gold heart to settle.
What love is stainless as the love
Of flower to flower? As stars above
Across the unlinked leagues of space
Flash light from shining face to face,
So flower to flower its blushes throws;
The rose is sister to the rose;
Her lover is the butterfly,
Who radiant as a god goes by,
Love's messenger from bloom to bloom
Of honey-wafts and heart's perfume.
No touch makes base the love of flowers;
No fevered yearning these devours
For hopeless faces. None deny
Their suit. They know no jealousy.
Their love is worship, their desire
Religious as an altar-fire.

The bright wings wavered broad and near;
I could not call my love to me,
But every glowing tint said clear:
Am I not fair enough for thee?
And as his welcome well he knew
Impetuous to my heart he flew.

Ah, what is Life to men or flowers?
A space of time, a span of hours?
A calendar of day and night?
Or one full moment of delight,
That comes unhoped, and cannot stay,
But washes all the rest away?
He drank my honey thirstily,
He drained my sweet life-honey dry,
Then rose with upright wings to fly;
And Life, the moment, was o'erpast.
A leaf its little shadow cast
Across the heart where Love had been;
But what could trouble the serene
Of clear unclouded memory?
Let who hath loved not, weep to die!
Not who hath taken love's full cup,
And drunk it to the sweet dregs up!
Peace held me like a folded wing;
I craved a blackbird's voice to sing
A psalm of sunset ere death stole
By leaf and leaf my sentient soul.
So, passion over, life ran weak;
The last faint fire-tint left my cheek;
My lustred petals drooped; I lay
To dream an ebbing life away,
As little clouds in moonlight pass
Melted into the heaven of glass.
But as I languished low, a sound
Unknown before bid life rebound.
No voice it was that I had heard,
Sighing of wind or song of bird;
Yet all at once I understood:
A girl was singing in the wood.
And as I looked, the darkening lane
Suddenly lightened; as the fane,
When to the fasting worshipper
At last the godhead doth appear.
Three maidens, fair of face as I
When first I opened to the sky,
Drew, like a dream of angels, nigh.
The fever of a fond regret
Came on me suddenly:
Would that the blush of morning yet
Unminished were in me!
That I might be a worthy prize
For those soft hands and sinless eyes!
For when beside the briar they came,
Joy through their faces went like flame.
They drew the hazels down o'erhead,
The long lithe wands, rose-garlanded,
And lightly reaped the harvest rare
Of rose and rosebud, all the fair.
Alas, not me, poor pale-white rose,
Wide open, soon to die, they chose!
But she that hard beside me sought
A bud with red tints ripe for blowing,
Clasping its stem, my close stem caught,
And plucked me, wishing not nor knowing;
But seeing said: ‘You too, wan flower,
Shall live with me your last short hour;
For even the dead leaf is divine
Of roses that have wreathed the shrine
Of Love or Nature. Nor may I
Sin as they sin who carelessly
Pluck flowers from life, then fling them by.
For howso well the flowers we tend,
Torn from their mother stem,
Can love or worship make amend
For all we take from them?
So, rose, lie here your life remaining,
And smile sweet pardon for your paining!’

Ah, wonder! to be asked forgiving
Of her whose touch was like new living!
And I was dumb—a tongueless thing!
How should she understand
What love, her sweet love answering,
Was cradled in her hand?
Yet haply by some subtler sense
Soul had of soul intelligence,
As softly in a sunset calm
I nestled in that tender palm.

The slender hands were laden full,
The slender fingers left to pull,
And joyous on their way the three
Went bearing their light load, and me.
The grey heads of the stately grass
Bent in obeisance as they pass;
Rude brambles caught at garments trailing,
Rough-handed suitors unprevailing;
Tall foxgloves, as with sorrow drooping,
Bowed in farewell through fern-leaves stooping.
So passed we down the deepening shade,
Until the long-drawn colonnade
Curved westward, and behold the way
Was flooded with a blinding day.
The hazel-vault ran on the same,
But widening to the end became
A fiery furnace-mouth of flame,
Where, gazing through a smoke of gold,
Scarce might the dazzled sight behold
The dying sun, who with both hands
Blest hills and woods and purple lands.
Each leaflet in the burning air
Like Elfin gold-work glows;
Each white robe flamed—an angel's wear,
Each white face flushed—a rose.

So came we to the end—the lane
Opened upon a world, a plain
Of Eden, and fair hills of Heaven,
Like visions of the Pilgrim's sweven.
Down from our height, in green and red
Long slopes of wheat and poppies led
To level leasowes; and between
Much woodland; on one side, half seen,
A hamlet hid in elms, aloof
From highways, clustering rick and roof
And lowly church-tower—a nest
For sight amid long flight to rest.
And up beyond, by low red foreland
Of quarried sand, by gloom of moorland
And barren heath, by darker verge
Of firwoods like grey seas with surge
Of sunlit emerald, the eye
Ran on to the world-boundary,
The smooth round hills in slumber deep;
And the sun kissed them in their sleep.
Long time the sisters lingered there
In silence, for the hour was rare,
As if old Earth, amid her pain,
Was visited of God again;
But when the loitering sun at last
Behind the northern hills had passed,
And over in the deepening sky
Opened the first clear starry eye,
Homeward they turned in tender mood
The dewy fields along;
And the girl-singer of the wood
Took up again her song.

‘O, Love, too late returning!
Why came you not before,
Ere tears had quenched the burning,
Or time had healed the sore?
Ere Faith had learned to falter,
Or praise been hushed to prayer,
When roses wreathed the altar,
And not one dead leaf there?

‘O Love, too late returning!
What welcome is there now,
When eyes have ceased from burning,
And fever left the brow;
And haply till the morrow
One leaf alone to save,
One roseleaf left for Sorrow
To lay upon Love's grave?’

The song had hushed; and now they spoke
Most musically low;
And in me some strange power awoke
That silver speech to know,
Not by interpreting of words,
But tonewise, like the tongue of birds.
(For Nature's fairest, each with each,
Man, bird, and flower, have common speech).
And like a many-chorded theme
Of music, in majestic dream,
Out of the converse of the three
Their picture-thoughts passed into me.
I saw the world beyond my ken,
The cities and the ways of men,
The ocean and the mighty girth
Of unimaginable earth,
And images more bright than words
Of spotted beasts and jewelled birds,
Of roses richer red than I,
Of hill-flowers bluer than the sky.
The feel of all Earth's beauty thrilled me;
A fellowship of gladness filled me:
Am I not too alive to-day,
Part of this wonder-world, as they?

Ev'n as I thrilled, a little breath
Touched me, and like the hand of death,
Loosed one white petal; with no sound
It wavered lightly to the ground.
A soft voice spake: ‘Poor rose!’ she said,
‘Poor day-lived beauty, quickly dead!
Why are you lovely, little flower,
Robed like an actor for one hour
Of mimic life and show of mirth
Upon the dusty stage of earth?
Alas! the little life of flowers!
That cometh not again, as ours,
In glad redemption after death,
But passes like a mirror-breath,
None careth, none remembereth!’

Then answered her the girl who pressed
My faded petals to her breast,
My spirit's bright interpreter;
As if from me had passed to her,
Through the soul's fine affinity,
My very self, she made reply:
‘I live: no more is mine to know.
The hours, the moments, as they go,
Are mine, full-freighted. Just to live
Strains every pulse too strong to give
One beat to other hours than this,
The past, the future, sorrow, bliss.
To-morrow thou shalt not be Thou!
Well, yesterday I was not; Now
I Am. The dew, the sun, the air,
Are mine. I have no other care.’

I heard the soft words fall and cease;
They seemed an epitaph of peace.
And as they ended, silently
My silken petals dropped from me
Like kisses on the hand that bore;
And suddenly I knew no more.