Muse and Mint

Chapter 31: CHAMBERED ROSES

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About This Book

A varied collection of short lyrical poems that observes nature and rural life, using seasonal imagery—sap, snow, rivers, cherries—and simple domestic scenes to reflect on change, beauty, and small joys. Sections shift between fireside recollections, sentimental and philosophical meditations, homiletic and religious pieces, and light humor, blending devotional songlike verses with moral aphorisms and affectionate memory. The voice moves between wistful and buoyant moods, finding consolation and ethical insight in commonplace experiences, while concise stanzas and vivid images emphasize mood and moral reflection rather than a continuous narrative.

CHAMBERED ROSES

Over in Dolorosa Hall,

Romantic memories breathing,

There’s a quaint old room with flowered wall

Of roses interwreathing,

The key on golden chain I wear

To guard the sacred chamber,

For as a bride demure and fair

My sainted Mary came there.

’Twas her dear self arranged it so

And helped to match the roses,

As she, alas, the ones which grow

O’er walls where she reposes.

I nurture these, the others seal

For subtler necromancy

Where Mary’s loving roses steal

Around the room of fancy.

They ramble from each corner to

The border o’er the moulding

And on in buds and tendrils through

The ceiling’s faded golding.

No hand shall ever tear them down

With cheap artistic violence,

For Mary wreathed the roses on,

Still fragrant with her silence.