Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. 1919. The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900.
John Davidson. 18571909851. The Last Rose
‘O WHICH is the last rose?’ | |
A blossom of no name. | |
At midnight the snow came; | |
At daybreak a vast rose, | |
In darkness unfurl’d, | 5 |
O’er-petall’d the world. | |
Its odourless pallor | |
Blossom’d forlorn, | |
Till radiant valour | |
Establish’d the morn— | 10 |
Till the night | |
Was undone | |
In her fight | |
With the sun. | |
The brave orb in state rose, | 15 |
And crimson he shone first; | |
While from the high vine | |
Of heaven the dawn burst, | |
Staining the great rose | |
From sky-line to sky-line. | 20 |
The red rose of morn | |
A white rose at noon turn’d; | |
But at sunset reborn | |
All red again soon burn’d. | |
Then the pale rose of noonday | 25 |
Rebloom’d in the night, | |
And spectrally white | |
In the light | |
Of the moon lay. | |
But the vast rose | 30 |
Was scentless, | |
And this is the reason: | |
When the blast rose | |
Relentless, | |
And brought in due season | 35 |
The snow rose, the last rose | |
Congeal’d in its breath, | |
Then came with it treason; | |
The traitor was Death. | |
In lee-valleys crowded, | 40 |
The sheep and the birds | |
Were frozen and shrouded | |
In flights and in herds. | |
In highways | |
And byways | 45 |
The young and the old | |
Were tortured and madden’d | |
And kill’d by the cold. | |
But many were gladden’d | |
By the beautiful last rose, | 50 |
The blossom of no name | |
That came when the snow came, | |
In darkness unfurl’d— | |
The wonderful vast rose | |
That fill’d all the world. | 55 |