Katharine Tynan
THE MYSTERY
He came and took me by the hand
Up to a red rose tree,
He kept His meaning to Himself
But gave a rose to me.
I did not pray Him to lay bare
The mystery to me,
Enough the rose was Heaven to smell
And His own face to see.
Ralph Hodgson
THE ROSE
And so must life be many-veined;
The loves that hurt, the fate that blent
My life with myriad lives and ways,
The processes that probed and pained,
The pencillings of nights and days—
Cross currents, tangling as they went,
With oh, such conflict in my soul!—
How should I know that they were meant
Just to make living sweet and whole,
Just to unclose
God's perfect rose?
Angela Morgan
FOR THESE
An acre of land between the shore and the hills,
Upon a ledge that shows my Kingdoms three,
The lovely visible earth and sky and sea,
Where what the curlew needs not, the farmer tills: