At dead of still noon on the grass-plot,
What means this passionate grief,—
This infinite ache of regret?[1]
Among the most familiar of the fragments is that of the “apple reddening upon the topmost bough,” which Rossetti has put into charming phrase, together with its companion verse upon the wild hyacinth; but while these lines are of haunting charm, they do not make a complete stanza, the comparison being unknown;
whereas Mr. Carman, in recasting the fragment, has supplied a logical complement to the lines and symmetrized them, together with their companion illustration, to a lyric. His rendering, too, while less musical, from being unrhymed, is picturesque and concise, each word being made to tell as a stroke in a sketch:
Art thou the topmost apple
The gatherers could not reach,
Reddening on the bough?
Shall not I take thee?
Art thou a hyacinth blossom