Harriet Monroe. The Rose-bush. Harriet Monroe, ed. Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. 1912-22

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. 1912–22.

The Rose-bush

By Harriet Monroe


From “Carolina Wood-cuts” “OLD Mammy Jones, I came to see your rose-bush.”
“Come right up, sonny!”
“Why does your rose-bush grow so taller and prouder
Than any white people’s roses?”
“Dunno, sonny—ask de good Lo’d.”	5
“Look, it has a thousand arms,
And they carry a million roses
In their baskets of leaves—
Over your roof, Mammy Jones,
Into your porch, into your wood-shed,	10
Pushing and crowding out everything
From the ground to the sky—
As round as the world!”

“It’s to trim my ole cabin up, sonny.”
“My mother has a garden, Mammy Jones,	15
With nice little rose-bushes in it
That the gardener trimmed,
And this morning there were pink and yellow buds
And lots of green ones.
But not roses and roses like yours,	20
Way up for God to smell ’em
In the sky!
Why is it, Mammy Jones?”

“Dunno, sonny—praps de good Lo’d like Mammy Jones;
Praps he give a bouquet to his gal.”	25