Let the wild red-rose bloom. Though not to thee
So delicately perfect as the white
And unwed lily drooping in the light,
Though she has known the kisses of the bee
And tells her amorous tale to passers-by
In perfumed whispers and with untaught grace,
Still let the red-rose bloom in her own place;
She could not be the lily should she try.
Why to the wondrous nightingale cry hush
Or bid her cease her wild heart-breaking lay,
And tune her voice to imitate the way
The whip-poor-will makes music, or the thrush?
All airs of sorrow to one theme belong,
And passion is not copyrighted yet.
Each heart writes its own music. Why not let
The nightingale unchided sing her song?
THE DEPTHS
Not only sun-kissed heights are fair. Below
The cold, dark billows of the frowning deep
Do lovely blossoms of the ocean sleep,
Rocked gently by the waters to and fro.
The coral beds with magic colours glow,
And priceless pearl-encrusted molluscs heap
The glittering rocks where shining atoms leap
Like living broken rainbows.
Even so
We find the sea of sorrow. Black as night
The sullen surface meets our frightened gaze,
As down we sink to darkness and despair.
But at the depths—such beauty! such delight!
Such flowers as never grew in pleasure’s ways!
Ah! not alone are sun-kissed summits fair.
LIFE’S OPERA
Like an opera-house is the world, I ween,
Where the passionate lover of music is seen
In the balcony near the roof:
While the very best seat in the first stage-box
Is filled by the person who laughs and talks
Through the harmony’s warp and woof.
THE SALT SEA-WIND
When Venus, mother and maker of blisses,
Rose out of the billows, large-limbed, and fair,
She stood on the sands and blew sweet kisses
To the salt sea-wind as she dried her hair.
And the salt sea-wind was the first to caress her
To praise her beauty and call her sweet,
The first of the whole wide world to possess her,
She, that creature of light and heat.