THE FLOWER OF LOVE LIES BLEEDING
I MET a little maid one day,
All in the bright May weather;
She danced, and brushed the dew away
As lightly as a feather.
She had a ballad in her hand
That she had just been reading,
But was too young to understand:—
That ditty of a distant land,
“The flower of love lies bleeding.”
She tripped across the meadow grass,
To where a brook was flowing,
Across the brook like wind did pass,—
Wherever flowers were growing
Like some bewildered child she flew,
Whom fairies were misleading:
“Whose butterfly,” I said, “are you?
And what sweet thing do you pursue?”—
“The flower of love lies bleeding!”
“I’ve found the wild rose in the hedge,
I’ve found the tiger-lily,—
The blue flag by the water’s edge,—
The dancing daffodilly,—
King-cups and pansies,—every flower
Except the one I’m needing;—
Perhaps it grows in some dark bower,
And opens at a later hour,—
This flower of love lies bleeding.”
“I wouldn’t look for it,” I said,
“For you can do without it:
There’s no such flower.” She shook her head;
“But I have read about it!”
I talked to her of bee and bird,
But she was all unheeding:
Her tender heart was strangely stirred,
She harped on that unhappy word,—
“The flower of love lies bleeding!”
“My child,” I sighed, and dropped a tear,
“I would no longer mind it;
You’ll find it some day, never fear,
For all of us must find it!
I found it many a year ago,
With one of gentle breeding;
You and the little lad you know,—
I see why you are weeping so,—
Your flower of love lies bleeding!”
Richard Henry Stoddard.
THE GOLD ROOM
AN IDYL
THEY come from mansions far up-town,
And from their country villas,
And some, Charybdis’ gulf whirls down,
And some fall into Scylla’s.
Lo! here young Paris climbs the stairs
As if their slope were Ida’s,
And here his golden touch declares
The ass’s ears of Midas.
It seems a Bacchic, brawling rout
To every business-scorner,
But such, methinks, must be an “out,”
Or has not made a “corner.”
In me the rhythmic gush revives;
I feel a classic passion:
We, also, lead Arcadian lives,
Though in a Broad-Street fashion.
Old Battos, here, ’s a leading bull,
And Diomed a bear is,
And near them, shearing bankers’ wool,
Strides the Tiltonian Charis;
And Atys, there, has gone to smash,
His every bill protested,
While Cleon’s eyes with comfort flash,—
Mehercle! ’tis the same thing yet
As in the days of Pindar:
The Isthmian race, the dust and sweat,
The prize—why, what’s to hinder?
And if I twang my lyre at times,
They did so then, I reckon;
That man’s the best at modern rhymes
Whom you can draw a check on!
Bayard Taylor.