The Messenger Rose
If you have seen a richer glow, Pray, tell me where your roses blow! Look! coral-leaved! and -- mark these spots Red staining red in crimson clots, Like a sweet lip bitten through In a pique. There, where that hue Is spilt in drops, some fairy thing Hath gashed the azure of its wing, Or thence, perhaps, this very morn, Plucked the splinters of a thorn. Rose! I make thy bliss my care! In my lady's dusky hair Thou shalt burn this coming night, With even a richer crimson light. To requite me thou shalt tell -- What I might not say as well -- How I love her; how, in brief, On a certain crimson leaf In my bosom, is a debt Writ in deeper crimson yet. If she wonder what it be -- But she'll guess it, I foresee -- Tell her that I date it, pray, From the first sweet night in May.
Henry Timrod’s other poems:
- The Stream is Flowing from the West
- To Whom?
- An Exotic
- 1866 – Addressed to the Old Year
- Hymn Sung at an Anniversary of the Asylum of Orphans at Charleston
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