Among the strangers was a singer from the North, from the home of mists and northern lights. He broke off the rose and pressed it in a book, and so carried it away with him to another part of the world, to his distant Fatherland. And the rose withered away from grief lying tightly pressed in the narrow book, till he opened it in his home and said “Here is a rose from Homer’s grave!”
Now this is what the flower dreamt, and it woke up shivering in the wind; a dewdrop fell from its petals upon the singer’s grave. The sun rose and the day was very hot, the rose bloomed in greater beauty than ever in the warmth of Asia.
Footsteps were heard and the strange Franks whom the rose saw in its dream came up. Among the strangers was a poet from the North, he broke off the rose and pressed a kiss upon its dewy freshness, and carried it with him to the home of mists and northern lights. The relics of the rose rest now like a mummy between the leaves of his Iliad, and as in its dream it hears him say when he opens the book,
“Here is a rose from Homer’s grave!”
THE SECRET WOULDST THOU KNOW
TO TOUCH THE HEART OR FIRE THE BLOOD AT WILL?
LET THINE OWN EYES O’ERFLOW;
LET THY LIPS QUIVER WITH THE PASSIONATE THRILL;
SEIZE THE GREAT THOUGHT, ERE YET ITS POWER BE PAST,
AND BIND, IN WORDS, THE FLEET EMOTIONS FAST.