I wrench the thorn-stocks from their hold
To set a rose-bush in that place;
Love has pleasure in my roses
For a summer space.
Yet the bush cries out in grief:
“Our lowest rootlets turn on rock,
We live in terror of the drought
Withering crown and stock.”
I grow angry with my creature,
Tear it out and see it die;
Far beneath I strike the stone,
Jarring hatefully.
Impotently must I mourn
Roses never to flower again?
Are heart and back too slightly built
For a heaving strain?
Heave shall break my proud back never,
Strain shall never burst my heart:
Steely fingers hook in the crack,
Up the rock shall start.
Now from the deep and frightful pit
Shoots forth the spiring phœnix-tree
Long despaired in this bleak land,
Holds the air with boughs, with bland
Fragrance welcome to the bee,
With fruits of immortality.
AN IDYLL OF OLD AGE
Two gods once visited a hermit couple,
Philemon and his Baucis, old books tell;
They sampled elder-wine and called it nectar,
Though nectar is the tastier drink by far.
They made ambrosia of pot-herb and lentil,
They ate pease-porridge even, with a will.
Why, and so forth....
But that night in the spare bedroom
Where they lay shivering in the musty gloom,
Hermes and Zeus overheard conversation,
Behind the intervening wall, drag on
In thoughtful snatches through the night. They idly
Listened, and first they heard Philemon sigh:—
Phi. “Since two souls meet and merge at time of marriage,
Conforming to one stature and one age,
An honest token each with each exchanging
Of Only Love unbroken as a ring—
What signified my boyhood’s ideal friendship
That stared its ecstasy at eye and lip,
But dared not touch because love seemed too holy
For flesh with flesh in real embrace to lie?”
Bau. Then Baucis sighed in answer to Philemon,
“Many’s the young man that my eye rests on
(Our younger guest to-night provides the instance)
Whose body brings my heart hotter romance
Than your dear face could ever spark within me;
Often I wish my heart from yours set free.”