Andrew Macphail (1864–1938)

From Hélène Vacaresco’s ‘Le Rhapsode de la Dimbovita’

I AM the flowers of yesterday.

I have drunk of my last dew.

Young maidens sang at my death

And the moon sees me laid

In my dewy shroud.

And yesterday’s flowers, which yet live in me,

Have given place to flowers of to-morrow.

And the young girls who sang at my death,—

Youth is the time for singing,—

Must needs themselves give way

To maidens following after.

And as my soul, so their soul too,

Laden with fragrance, will remain.

But to-morrow’s maidens never will know

That I did blossom once.

They will gaze upon other flowers;

But my sweetly-scented soul

Will recall to the minds of women

The days when they were young.

And they will regret that they sang as I died.

I bear with me also the sorrow of butterflies,

The sun’s remembrance,

And the murmurs of spring.

My fragrance is sweet as a child’s first word,

My essence is drawn from the fecund earth:

It will long outlive my life.

I say to the flowers of to-morrow, born of my roots,

Love the sun as we have loved:

Love all lovers and the birds,

So when they see you bloom afresh

They will not think upon my death,

But always dream these are the self-same flowers

Even as the sun, who thinks he always sees

The same flowers and birds upon the earth,

Because he is immortal,

And never thinks of death.