A humble wild-rose, pink and slender, Was plucked and placed in a bright bouquet, Beside a Jacqueminot’s royal splendour, And both in my lady’s boudoir lay.
Said the haughty bud, in a tone of scorning, “I wonder why you are called a rose? Your leaves will fade in a single morning; No blood of mine in your pale cheek glows.
“Your coarse green stalk shows dust of the highway, You have no depths of fragrant bloom; And what could you learn in a rustic byway To fit you to lie in my lady’s room?
“If called to adorn her warm, white bosom, What have you to offer for such a place, Beside my fragrant and splendid blossom, Ripe with colour and rich with grace?”
Said the sweet wild-rose, “Despite your dower Of finer breeding and deeper hue, Despite your beauty, fair, high-bred flower, It is I who should lie on her breast, not you.
“For small account is your hot-house glory Beside the knowledge that came to me When I heard by the wayside love’s old story And felt the kiss of the amorous bee.”
To yearn for what we have not had, to sit With hungry eyes glued on the Future’s gate, Why, that is heaven compared to having it With all the power gone to appreciate.
Better to wait and yearn, and still to wait, And die at last with unappeased desire, Than live to be the jest of such a fate, For that is my conception of hell-fire.
In that great journey of the stars through space About the mighty, all-directing Sun, The pallid, faithful Moon has been the one Companion of the Earth. Her tender face, Pale with the swift, keen purpose of that race Which at Time’s natal hour was first begun, Shines ever on her lover as they run And lights his orbit with her silvery smile.
Sometimes such passionate love doth in her rise, Down from her beaten path she softly slips, And with her mantle veils the Sun’s bold eyes, Then in the gloaming finds her lover’s lips. While far and near the men our world call wise See only that the Sun is in eclipse.
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.