Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry. 1904.
V. Death and BereavementLavender
AnonymousH
Each little treasure time has stored,
To tell of happy hours!
We lay aside with tender care
A tattered book, a lock of hair,
A bunch of faded flowers.
Our darlings to the “Silent Land,”
Awhile we sit bereft;
But time goes on; anon we rise,
Our dead are buried from our eyes,
We gather what is left.
The little flute whose music rang
So cheerily of old;
The pictures we had watched them paint,
The last plucked flower, with odor faint,
That fell from fingers cold.
The robes they living used to wear;
And painful pulses stir
As o’er the relics of our dead,
With bitter rain of tears, we spread
Pale purple lavender.
With only tender April tears
On cheeks once white with care,
To look on treasures put away
Despairing on that far-off day,
A subtile scent is there.
These fragrant flowers; now every stem
Is bare of all its bloom:
Tear-wet and sweet we strewed them here
To lend our relics, sacred, dear,
Their beautiful perfume.
On curl and flower, and with its mute
But eloquent appeal
It wins from us a deeper sob
For our lost dead, a sharper throb
Than we are wont to feel.
Its love, its loss, its aching woe,
And buried sorrows stir;
And tears like those we shed of old
Roll down our cheeks as we behold
Our faded lavender.