Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). A Victorian Anthology, 1837–1895. 1895.
Harriet Eleanor Hamilton King b. 1840The Crocus
O
Out of the melting of the snow,
No flower, but a film, I push to light;
No stem, no bud,—yet I have burst
The bars of winter, I am the first,
O Sun, to greet thee out of the night!
Yet it is fire at the heart I bear,
I come, a flame that is fed by none:
The summer hath blossoms for her delight,
Thick and dewy and waxen-white,
Thou seest me golden, O golden Sun!
Life is still, and the peace profound:
Yet a beam that pierced, and a thrill that smote
Call’d me and drew me from far away;—
I rose, I came, to the open day
Have won, unshelter’d, alone, remote.
I shall die ere the butterfly is born,
I shall hear no note of the nightingale;
The swallow will come at the break of green,
He will never know that I have been
Before him here when the world was pale.
The hyacinth stalk,—soft airs for them;
They shall have strength, I have but love:
They shall not be tender as I,—
Yet I fought here first, to bloom, to die,
To shine in his face who shines above.
O Dream that shap’d me, and I was born
In thy likeness, starry, and flower of flame;
I lie on the earth, and to thee look up,
Into thy image will grow my cup,
Till a sunbeam dissolve it into the same.