THE ROSE

It tossed its head at the wooing breeze;

And the sun, like a bashful swain,

Beamed on it through the waving trees

With a passion all in vain,—

For my rose laughed in a crimson glee,

And hid in the leaves in wait for me.

The honey-bee came there to sing

His love through the languid hours,

And vaunt of his hives, as a proud old king

Might boast of his palace-towers:

But my rose bowed in a mockery,

And hid in the leaves in wait for me.

The humming-bird, like a courtier gay,

Dipped down with a dalliant song,

And twanged his wings through the roundelay

Of love the whole day long:

Yet my rose returned from his minstrelsy

And hid in the leaves in wait for me.

The firefly came in the twilight dim

My red, red rose to woo —

Till quenched was the flame of love in him

And the light of his lantern too,

As my rose wept with dewdrops three

And hid in the leaves in wait for me.

And I said: I will cull my own sweet rose —

Some day I will claim as mine

The priceless worth of the flower that knows

No change, but a bloom divine —

The bloom of a fadeless constancy

That hides in the leaves in wait for me!

But time passed by in a strange disguise,

And I marked it not, but lay

In a lazy dream, with drowsy eyes,

Till the summer slipped away,

And a chill wind sang in a minor key:

“Where is the rose that waits for thee?”

I dream to-day, o'er a purple stain

Of bloom on a withered stalk,

Pelted down by the autumn rain

In the dust of the garden-walk,

That an Angel-rose in the world to be

Will hide in the leaves in wait for me.