With A Rose

In the heart of a rose
        Lies the heart of a maid;
        If you be not afraid
You will wear it.    Who knows?

In the pink of its bloom,
        Lay your lips to her cheek;
        Since a rose cannot speak,
And you gain the perfume.

If the dews on the leaf
        Are the tears from her eyes;
        If she withers and dies,
Why, you have the belief,

That a rose cannot speak,
        Though the heart of a maid
        In its bosom must fade,
And with fading must break.

Dora Sigerson Shorter

Dora Sigerson Shorter was an Irish poet and sculptor born in Dublin in 1866. She was one of the leading figures of the Irish Literary Revival, a movement that aimed to promote Irish literature and culture in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. She was also a close friend of W.B. Yeats and married the writer and journalist Clement King Shorter. Dora's work often dealt with themes of Irish nationalism and folklore, and she published several volumes of poetry before her untimely death in 1918.

Dora Sigerson Shorter

Love

Dora Sigerson Shorter, Simple Poetry

In A Wood

Dora Sigerson Shorter, Simple Poetry

The Skeleton In The Cupboard

Dora Sigerson Shorter, Simple Poetry

My Neighbours Garden

Dora Sigerson Shorter, Simple Poetry

English

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The Queen-Rose. A Summer Idyl.

The sunlight fell with a golden gleam
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A humble wild-rose, pink and slender,
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Rose.

When the evening broods quiescent
Over mountain, vale and lea,
And the moon uplifts her crescent
Far above the peaceful sea,
Little Rose, the fisher's daughter,
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Have a care, my merry maiden!
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Has he worth, and is he truthful?
Thoughtless maiden rarely knows;
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Says the heart of little Rose.

Hark! the horn - its shrill vibrations
Tremble through the maiden's breast,
As the sweet reverberations
Dwindle to their whispered rest;
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A Dead Rose

O Rose! who dares to name thee?
No longer roseate now, nor soft, nor sweet;
But pale, and hard, and dry, as stubble-wheat,
Kept seven years in a drawer, thy titles shame thee.

The breeze that used to blow thee
Between the hedgerow thorns, and take away
An odour up the lane to last all day,
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The sun that used to smite thee,
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The dew that used to wet thee,
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The fly that lit upon thee,
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The Rose: To Ellen.

The sportive sylphs that course the air,
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And breathe sweet incense o'er its leaves.

With sparkling cups of bubbles made,
They catch the ruddy beams of day,
And steal the rainbow's sweetest shade,
Their blushing favorite to array.

They gather gems with sunbeams bright,
From floating clouds and falling showers
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To grace their own fair queen of flowers.

Thus, thus adorned, the speaking Rose,
Becomes a token fit to tell,
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A Worn Rose

Where to-day would a dainty buyer
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A chalice cup where no bee sips -
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Close to her white flesh housed an hour,
        One held you... her spent form
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