VARIATIONS ON A THEME OF LAFORGUE.

Youth as it opens out discloses

The sinister metempsychosis

Of lilies dead and turned to roses

Red as an angry dawn.

But lilies, remember, are grave-side flowers,

While slow bright rose-leaves sail

Adrift on the music of happiest hours;

And those lilies, cold and pale,

Hide fiery roses beneath the lawn

Of the young bride's parting veil.