Heedless how it may fare with Time,
I send you here a rose of rhyme:
Its fragrance, love; its color, one
Caught from hope’s ever-constant sun;
Upon each leaf a lyric writ—
Your eyes alone may witness it;
And in its heart for you to see
Another heart—the heart of me.
All roses are as fitly worn
By you as by your sister Morn,
Since you, like Morn, fail not to give
New heauty to them while they live.
If this against your bosom rest
One brief, sweet hour, its life were blest
Then, should you chance to cast it by,
It would not find it hard to (lie.
So take this bloom of love and song,
And, be its life or brief or long,
Know that for you the petals part,
Disclosing all its lyric heart;
For you its fragrant breaths are drawn;
For you its color—love’s glad dawn;
And for you, too, the heart that goes
Song-prisoned in this rhyme of rose!