LADY VIOLET AGAIN
II
FIVE RED POPPIES
They hung their heads in a florist's window. The people of the town did not buy them, for they wanted roses—yellow, white or crimson. But I, a lover, passing that way, did covet them for a woman that I knew, and straightway bought them.
As I placed those poppies in a box, on a bed of green moss, I heard them chuckle together, with some surprise and much glee. "What a kind fool he is," said the first poppy, "to buy me, and take me away from those disagreeable roses, and other hateful blossoms in that damp, musty window."
"I heard," said the second poppy, "one sweet lily of the valley whisper to the others of its simple kind that we would die where we were unnoticed, undesired by any one—how little it knew!"
"How cool and green this bed of moss," cried the third poppy; "it is a most excellent place to die upon. I am willing, I am happy."
"Nay," said the fourth poppy, "you may die on her breast if you will. She may take you up and put you into a jar of clear water. She may watch you slowly open your sleepy dark eye. She may lean over you; then let your passionate breath but touch her on the white brow, and she may tenderly thrust you into her whiter bosom, and quickly yield herself, and you, to an all-powerful forgetfulness. She may twine me into her dark hair, and I will calm the throb of her blue-veined temples, and bring upon her a sleep and a forgetting."
The fifth poppy trembled with joyful expectation, but said not a word.