THE ROSE IN WINTER

When last I saw this opening rose

That holds the summer in its hand,

And with its beauty overflows

And sweetens half a shire of land,

It was a black and cindered thing,

Drearily rocking in the cold,

The relic of a vanished spring,

A rose abominably old.

Amid the stainless snows it grinned,

A foul and withered shape, that cast

Ribbed shadows, and the gleaming wind

Went rattling through it as it passed;

It filled the heart with a strange dread,

Hag-like, it made a whimpering sound,

And gibbered like the wandering dead

In some unhallowed burial-ground.

Whoso on that December day

Had seen it so deject and lorn,

So lone a symbol of decay,

Had dreamed of it this summer morn?

Divined the power that should relume

A flame so spent, and once more bring

That blackened being back to bloom,—

Who could have dreamed so strange a thing?