The Mossrose

Walking to-day in your garden, O gracious lady,

Little you thought as you turned in that alley remote and shady,

And gave me a rose and asked if I knew its savour —

The old-world scent of the mossrose, flower of a bygone favour —

Little you thought as you waited the word of appraisement,

Laughing at first and then amazed at my amazement,

That the rose you gave was a gift already cherished,

And the garden whence you plucked it a garden long perished.

But I — I saw that garden, with its one treasure

The tiny mossrose, tiny even by childhood's measure,

And the long morning shadow of the dusty laurel,

And a boy and a girl beneath it, flushed with a childish quarrel.

She wept for her one little bud: but he, outreaching

The hand of brotherly right, would take it for all her beseeching:

And she flung her arms about him, and gave like a sister,

And laughed at her own tears, and wept again when he kissed her.

So the rose is mine long since, and whenever I find it

And drink again the sharp sweet scent of the moss behind it,

I remember the tears of a child, and her love and her laughter,

And the morning shadows of youth and the night that fell thereafter.