CHAMBERED ROSES
Over in Dolorosa Hall,
Romantic memories breathing,
There’s a quaint old room with flowered wall
Of roses interwreathing,
The key on golden chain I wear
To guard the sacred chamber,
For as a bride demure and fair
My sainted Mary came there.
’Twas her dear self arranged it so
And helped to match the roses,
As she, alas, the ones which grow
O’er walls where she reposes.
I nurture these, the others seal
For subtler necromancy
Where Mary’s loving roses steal
Around the room of fancy.
They ramble from each corner to
The border o’er the moulding
And on in buds and tendrils through
The ceiling’s faded golding.
No hand shall ever tear them down
With cheap artistic violence,
For Mary wreathed the roses on,
Still fragrant with her silence.