Poems

Chapter 13: I have loved flowers that fade

Open in WeRead

Explore more books like this:

About This Book

A selection of lyrical poems gathered from several short series, offering quiet meditations on memory, love, and the passing seasons. Many pieces place a reflective speaker beside rivers, hills, and gardens, using precise pastoral detail to evoke mood and recollection. Occasional mythic or devotional images and poems of courtly wooing broaden the emotional range, while elegiac pieces consider loss and aging. The language favors compact, formally patterned lyrics—rhyme, meter, musical diction—to produce concentrated, often wistful impressions.

I have loved flowers that fade,

Within whose magic tents

Rich hues have marriage made

With sweet unmemoried scents:

A honeymoon delight,—

A joy of love at sight,

That ages in an hour:—

My song be like a flower!

I have loved airs, that die

Before their charm is writ

Upon the liquid sky

Trembling to welcome it.

Notes, that with pulse of fire

Proclaim the spirit’s desire,

Then die, and are nowhere:—

My song be like an air!

Die, song, die like a breath,

And wither as a bloom:

Fear not a flowery death,

Dread not an airy tomb!

Fly with delight, fly hence!

’Twas thine love’s tender sense

To feast, now on thy bier

Beauty shall shed a tear.