The Mossrose

    Walking to-day in your garden, O gracious lady,
    Little you thought as you turned in that alley remote and shady,
    And gave me a rose and asked if I knew its savour--
    The old-world scent of the mossrose, flower of a bygone favour--

    Little you thought as you waited the word of appraisement,
    Laughing at first and then amazed at my amazement,
    That the rose you gave was a gift already cherished,
    And the garden whence you plucked it a garden long perished.

    But I--I saw that garden, with its one treasure
    The tiny mossrose, tiny even by childhood's measure,
    And the long morning shadow of the dusty laurel,
    And a boy and a girl beneath it, flushed with a childish quarrel.

    She wept for her one little bud: but he, outreaching
    The hand of brotherly right, would take it for all her beseeching:
    And she flung her arms about him, and gave like a sister,
    And laughed at her own tears, and wept again when he kissed her.

    So the rose is mine long since, and whenever I find it
    And drink again the sharp sweet scent of the moss behind it,
    I remember the tears of a child, and her love and her laughter,
    And the morning shadows of youth and the night that fell thereafter.