 | Carmina crucis |  |
3
THE ALOE.
“The aloe, after a long life of rest, sends up a large flower-spike,
which shoots up in a few weeks on a stem from twenty
to thirty feet high, utterly destroying the parent plant by its
rapid, exhausting growth.”
Love's daily, fond, continual miracle
I cannot work for thee, nor crown thy day
Each passing hour with bloom of bud and bell;
Not mine with subtle fancies light and gay
To clasp thy soul about with delicate rings
Like hers, the summer's wooer, born with wings,
Sweet flower that fain would climb, yet only clings!
Let flowers like hers be fair,
For they were born to bless
The warm, still brooding air,
And win the wind's caress;
Such flowers were born to woo,
To flatter, yet be true,
And spend their souls away in fond excess;
4
Fall light upon the sunny grass at noon;
So let the gorgeous rose
Fold to her proud warm heart the heart of June,
And let each pass in passing of the leaf,
In passing of the flower, when earthward goes
All that earth knows of glory, sweet and brief;
A flower that is not fair,
But wondrous, blooms my secret soul within;
Sudden the life it springs to! strange and rare
The aspect that it weareth, long shut in
From sunshine and sweet air as in a tomb;
It cleaves the heart that beareth it to win
A moment's triumph ending in swift doom;
—Then marvel not that it was slow to bloom.
| Carmina crucis | |