Poems

Chapter 4: Poor withered rose and dry

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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.

Poor withered rose and dry,

Skeleton of a rose,

Risen to testify

To love’s sad close:

Treasured for love’s sweet sake,

That of joy past

Thou might’st again awake

Memory at last:

Yet is thy perfume sweet,

Thy petals red

Yet tell of summer heat,

And the gay bed:

Yet yet recall the glow

Of the gazing sun,

When at thy bush we two

Joined hands in one.

But, rose, thou hast not seen,

Thou hast not wept

The change that passed between

Whilst thou hast slept.

To me thou seemest yet

The dead dream’s thrall:

While I live and forget

Dream, truth and all.

Thou art more fresh than I,

Rose, sweet and red:

Salt on my pale cheeks lie

The tears I shed.