Joyce Kilmer

Chapter 38: ROSES (For Katherine Brègy)

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About This Book

A biographical memoir accompanies a wide selection of poems, essays, and letters that together trace the author’s life, friendships, and artistic growth. The poems alternate between nature and devotional themes, domestic observations, and wartime and memorial pieces composed both abroad and at home. Essays and correspondence reveal literary preferences, personal affections, and religious sensibilities, while photographs and facsimiles supplement the personal record. The collection balances lyrical short poems with occasional longer pieces and critical or biographical sketches, offering a compact portrait of a poet engaged with faith, ordinary life, and the moral and emotional stakes of his historical moment.

ROSES
(For Katherine Brègy)

I went to gather roses and twine them in a ring,

For I would make a posy, a posy for the King.

I got an hundred roses, the loveliest there be,

From the white rose vine and the pink rose bush and from the red rose tree.

But when I took my posy and laid it at His feet

I found He had His roses a million times more sweet.

There was a scarlet blossom upon each foot and hand,

And a great pink rose bloomed from His side for the healing of the land.

Now of this fair and awful King there is this marvel told,

That He wears a crown of linkèd thorns instead of one of gold.

Where there are thorns are roses, and I saw a line of red,

A little wreath of roses around His radiant head.

A red rose is His Sacred Heart, a white rose is His face,

And His breath has turned the barren world to a rich and flowery place.

He is the Rose of Sharon, His gardener am I,

And I shall drink His fragrance in Heaven when I die.