Henry Austin Dobson (1840–1921)

‘De mémoires de Rose on n’a point vu mourir le Jardinier.’

THE ROSE in the garden slipp’d her bud,

And she laugh’d in the pride of her youthful blood,

As she thought of the Gardener standing by—

‘He is old,—so old! And he soon must die!’

The full Rose wax’d in the warm June air,

And she spread and spread till her heart lay bare;

And she laugh’d once more as she heard his tread—

‘He is older now! He will soon be dead!’

But the breeze of the morning blew, and found

That the leaves of the blown Rose strew’d the ground;

And he came at noon, that Gardener old,

And he raked them softly under the mould.

And I wove the thing to a random rhyme,

For the Rose is Beauty, the Gardener Time.