Page:Poems Rossetti.djvu/403

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AN OCTOBER GARDEN.
375
AN OCTOBER GARDEN.
IN my Autumn garden I was fain
To mourn among my scattered roses;
Alas for that last rosebud which uncloses
To Autumn's languid sun and rain
When all the world is on the wane!
Which has not felt the sweet constraint of June,
Nor heard the nightingale in tune.

Broad-faced asters by my garden walk.
You are but coarse compared with roses:
More choice, more dear that rosebud which uncloses
Faint-scented, pinched, upon its stalk,
That least and last which cold winds balk;
A rose it is though least and last of all,
A rose to me though at the fall.


"SUMMER IS ENDED."
TO think that this meaningless thing was ever a rose,
    Scentless, colourless, this!
Will it ever be thus (who knows?)
     Thus with our bliss,
  If we wait till the close?

Though we care not to wait for the end,there comes the end
    Sooner, later, at last,
Which nothing can mar, nothing mend:
     An end locked fast,
  Bent we cannot re-bend.