Page:The roamer and other poems (1920).djvu/104

The sea, aye echoing eternity.
Other this soil, rich with the rose-leaf mould
Of beauty dead, breathed forth mortality.
Death choked the vital air, as on he went,
The death of beauty; here, pink-petalled, fell
The boy-loved arethusa, golden-tongued,
In the black swamp-land, moccasins by the pine;
And every flower bade memory farewell.
Oft he deplored the blue hepatica,
The earliest darling of the wood, the hills
Long since deflowered, whereon the laden bloom
Of mountain-laurel crowned his summers up
With sorrow, and the faces of old springs
Hung o'er the last year's brown and withered leaves.
O young and tender heart that saw the earth
Grown sad with beauty gone,—"Ay! this long time!"
He swept the sighing words from youthful lips:
"The grave spans all things with a little space!
Shut in the rose are summer's obsequies!
Death links with death!" and higher rose his strain:
"All things decay and vanish, changing form,
The infinite variable. The rainbow's arch
Is baseless, and the azure firmament,
Drifted with snowy mountains, range on range,

Shuts, as the lily; all that's in the world