Poems (Allen)/Chrysanthemums

by Elizabeth Chase Allen

CHRYSANTHEMUMS.

NCE, long ago in summer's glow,
 We threaded, you and I,
A garden's maze of pleasant ways,
 Whose beauty charmed the eye,—
Where violets bent in sweet content,
 And pinks stood proud and high.

And from their screen of tender green
 Broad pansies, peeping through,
Wore gorgeous dyes like butterflies;
 Cool lilies kept the dew,
And fair and tall along the wall
 The climbing roses grew.

The velvet bees in fragrant ease,
 Lay drunken with perfume,
Song-sparrows made the garden's shade
 Their fitting concert-room,
And all the air was music there,
 And all the earth was bloom.

There grew one plant in utter want
 Of bud or blossom-dower;—
I broke a spray of leaves away,
 And said, "The winter hour
Will crown these stems with diadems,—
 This bears the Christ's sweet flower.

"It cheers with bloom the stormy gloom
 By chill December nursed;
And it is told in stories old
 That this fair blossom first,
On that blest morn when Christ was born,
 Into whim beauty burst.

"Perhaps—ah well, we cannot tell
 If truly it be so;
I but repeat the legend sweet,
 And only this I know,—
That in the prime of Christmas time
 The Christ's sweet flowers blow.

"More pure and clear than any here,
 Their snowy discs unfold,
White as a star that melts afar
 Into the morning's gold,
And odor rare above compare,
 Their fragrant fringes hold.

"This branch I break for memory's sake,
 And ere descends the snow,
The slender bough I sever now
 Within our home shall grow;
How brightly there, all white and fair,
 The Christ's sweet flowers shall blow!"

*****

The curtains fold away the cold,—
 The bleak and drifting snow;
Red fire-gleams fall where on the wall
 The pleasant pictures glow;
And fair and white beneath the light
 The Christ's sweet flowers blow.

But cold and deep the snow-drifts heap
 Above thy silent form;
I cannot hold my garment's fold
 Between thee and the storm,—
I cannot dare the bitter air,
 And clasp thee near and warm.

And what to me are light and glee
 When all the while I know
That cold and deep the snow-drifts heap
 Above thy slumber low,
What do I care that white and fair
 The Christ's sweet flowers blow?