C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

Philip Bourke Marston (1850–1887)

Before and After the Flower-Birth

LO here! how warm and dark and still it is:

Sister, lean close to me, that we may kiss.

Here we go rising, rising—but to where?

Indeed I cannot tell, nor do I care:

It is so warm and pleasant here. But hark!

What strangest sound was that above the dark?

As if our sisters all together sang—

Seemed it not so?

More loud than that it rang;

And louder still it rings, and seems more near.

Oh! I am shaken through and through with fear—

Now in some deadly grip I seem confined!

Farewell, my sister! Rise, and follow, and find.

From how far off those last words seemed to fall!

Gone where she will not answer when I call!

How lost? how gone? Alas! this sound above me—

“Poor little violet, left with none to love thee!”

And now, it seems, I break against that sound!

What bitter pain is this that binds me round,

This pain I press into! Where have I come?

Welcome, dear sisters, to our fairy home!

They call this—Garden, and the time is Spring.

Like you I have felt the pain of flowering:

But oh! the wonder and the deep delight

It was to stand here, in the broad sunlight,

And feel the wind flow round me cool and kind;

To hear the singing of the leaves the wind

Goes hurrying through; to see the mighty trees,

Where every day the blossoming buds increase.

At evening, when the shining sun goes in,

The gentler lights we see, and dews begin,

And all is still beneath the quiet sky,

Save sometimes for the wind’s low lullaby.

Poor little flowers!

What would you prate of now?

They have not heard: I will keep still. Speak low.

The trees bend to each other lovingly.

Daily they talk of fairer things to be,

Great talk they make about the coming Rose,—

The very fairest flower, they say, that blows,

Such scent she hath; her leaves are red, they say,

And fold her round in some divine, sweet way.

Would she were come, that for ourselves we might

Have pleasure in this wonder of delight!

Here comes the laughing, dancing, hurrying rain;

How all the trees laugh at the wind’s light strain!

We are so near the earth, the wind goes by

And hurts us not; but if we stood up high,

Like trees, then should we soon be blown away.

Nay; were it so, we should be strong as they.

I often think how nice to be a tree:

Why, sometimes in their boughs the stars I see.

Have you seen that?

I have, and so shall you;

But hush! I feel the coming of the dew.

How bright it is! the trees, how still they are!

I never saw so bright a star,

As that which stands and shines just over us.

My leaves feel strange and very tremulous.

And mine, and mine!

O warm, kind sun, appear!

I would the stars were gone, and day were here!

Sisters! No answer, sisters? Why so still?

Poor little violet, calling through the chill

Of this new frost which did her sister slay,

In which she must herself, too, pass away!

Nay, pretty violet, be not so dismayed:

Sleep only, on your sisters sweet, is laid.

No pleasant wind about the garden goes;

Perchance the wind has gone to bring the Rose.

O sisters! surely now your sleep is done.

I would we had not looked upon the sun.

My leaves are stiff with pain, O cruel night!

And through my root some sharp thing seems to bite.

Ah me! what pain, what coming change is this?[She dies.]

So endeth many a violet’s dream of bliss.

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