THE LONE WAYSIDE WILD ROSE.
I passed along a wilding lane
Where weeds and straying flowers grew,
Where clover-blooming meadows threw
Sweet love upon the winds in vain.
Lonely by the wayside wild
Where the earth all trodden lay,
There peeped a wild rose, one bright day,
And stretched its palms like a pleading child.
Day after day, day after day
It drank of love from heaven and earth
And lifted itself from a timid birth
To a beautiful soul in sweet array.
It breathed from out of its opening soul
The breath that heaven has given the rose,
The sweetest by far that mortal knows,
And drank sweet love from the night’s dew-bowl.
The tint of the fleecy clouds of morn
Came out of the flushing tide of its heart,
And lay on its cheek with artless art—
The fairest blush that ever was born.
’Twas when the rose was full in bloom
I passed along that wilding lane
When love upon the winds was vain,
The desert air its deathless tomb.
I loved the flower and said, “Alas!
’Tis sad to know such love must die,
Such sweetness with the mould must lie,
Such beauty into death must pass!”
I plucked the flower from off its stem
And said, “Sweet Flower! Life were Death
Without thy beauty and thy breath—
The heart must wither else for them.”
I plucked the flower—blest wild rose!—
I set it blooming in my heart,
And said, “Should my sweet rose depart
To-day—the night its dear life close,
“The love it leaves shall ever live,
Shall ever grow, and bloom and bloom,
Shall go with me thro’ Death’s dark gloom,
And hope of glad reunion give.”
The flower, blooming, lived and grew;—
That sweet wild rose is blooming still;
Its beauties every corner fill
That life and love and heart e’er knew.
And should my fond heart ever break,
That sweet wild rose would never die;—
’Twould spring from the mould where it might lie
And the fairest bloom immortal take!