Flowers of Passion (McKay)

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For works with similar titles, see Flowers of Passion.
Flowers of Passion (1920)
by Claude McKay

First published in the Cambridge Magazine 10 Summer (1920) p.56

2756182Flowers of Passion1920Claude McKay

The dancers have departed, dear,
And the last song has been sung;
The red-stained glasses mock my gaze
And the fiddle lies unstrung.

And I'm alone, alone once more,
Save for your sweet brown face
That comes reproachfully to me
In this unholy place.

I've kissed a thousand flowers, my own,
Gone drunk with their perfume;
But found out, when the madness passed,
You were the one pure bloom.

I've come to realise at last
How awful it may be
To cut adrift from sacred ties
And be completely free.

But life grows many flowers, my love,
Within its garden wall,
And passions are the strangest
And the deadliest of all.

This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.


The longest-living author of this work died in 1948, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 75 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.

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