| Alfred H. Miles, ed. Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century. 1907. | | | Poems.
V. The Root of Love | | By Isa (Craig) Knox (1831–1903) |
| | | UNTO a goodly tree— | |
| A rose-tree—in the garden of my heart, | |
| Grew up my love for thee! | |
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| Truth for its spreading root, | |
| That drew the sweetest virtue of the soil | 5 |
| Up to the freshest shoot. | |
| |
| My tree was richly clad; | |
| All generous thoughts and fancies burst the bud, | |
| And every leaf was glad. | |
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| Then last of all, the flower, | 10 |
| The perfect flower of love, herself proclaimed | |
| And ruled from hour to hour. | |
| |
| There came a thunder rain, | |
| But for each full-blown bloom it scattered down, | |
| Fresh buds it opened twain. | 15 |
| |
| There came a wind that reft | |
| Both leaf and flower, and broke both branch and stem; | |
| Only the root was left. | |
| |
| The root was left, and so | |
| The living rose lay hidden till the time | 20 |
| When the sweet south should blow. | | | | |
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