Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. V. Browning to Rupert Brooke

Isabella Valancy Crawford (1850–1887)

The Rose

THE ROSE was given to man for this:

He, sudden seeing it in later years,

Should swift remember Love’s first lingering kiss

And Grief’s last lingering tears;

Or, being blind, should feel its yearning soul

Knit all its piercing perfume round his own,

Till he should see on Memory’s ample scroll

All roses he had known;

Or, being hard, perchance his finger-tips,

Careless might touch the satin of its cup,

And he should feel a dead babe’s budding lips

To his lips lifted up;

Or, being deaf and smitten with its star,

Should, on a sudden, almost hear a lark

Rush singing up—the nightingale afar

Sing thro’ the dew-bright dark;

Or, sorrow-lost in paths that round and round

Circle old graves, its keen and vital breath

Should call to him within the yew’s bleak bound

Of Life, and not of Death.