Rosa Decidua

10 ROSA DECIDUA I am warned—that’s one word. Let my own back feel the lash ! All power of love is burnt right through to ash. Bray it in a mortar, mix with gall and ink, And give it to the children for a drink ! I’ll wait till she is dead, to bring those tears. I doubt not in the garden of my heart Whence she is torn that flowers will bloom again. May those be flowers of weeping, flowers of art. Flowers of great tenderness and pain, Broad lilied meers Lying in a lonely leafless forest Silent and motionless beneath the moon. I feel my weakness, O thou soul that soarest Into a heaven beyond imagining On the unfaltering wing. Of the magic swan ! I know this tune Should swell to a strong note, a triumph note Blared through a trumpet’s throat To tell the world I am no coward, or else Sob in sweet minor, soft as Asmodel’s Chant to the nightingale. I am so wrecked, so rent That one seems brag, the other sentiment. I cannot leave the present ; I will not pose There lies the rotten rose And stinks. That is the truth ; the rest is gloss. My loss was total loss. So close that rose lay to my heart, its fall Was the catastrophe of all.