Lord Alfred Douglas: Verses about Park

Roses red and white,
Every rose is hanging her head,
Silently comes the lady Night,
Only the flowers can hear her tread.

All day long the birds have been calling,
Calling shrill and sweet,
They are still when she comes with her long robe falling
Falling down to her feet.

The thrush has sung to his mate,
' She is coming ! hush ! she is coming ! '
She is lifting the latch at the gate,
And the bees have ceased from their humming.

I cannot see her face as she passes
Through my garden of white and red ;
But I know she has walked where the daisies and grasses
Are curtseying after her tread.

She has passed me by with a rustle and sweep
Of her robe (as she passed I heard it sweeping),
And all my red roses have fallen asleep,
And all my white roses are sleeping.

Through the still air of night
Suddenly comes, alone and shrill,
Like the far-off voice of the distant light,
The single piping trill
Of a bird that has caught the scent of the dawn,
And knows that the night is over ;
(She has poured her dews on the velvet lawn
And drenched the long grass and the clover),
And now with her naked white feet
She is silently passing away,
Out of the garden and into the street,
Over the long yellow fields of the wheat,
Till she melts in the arms of the day.
And from the great gates of the East,
With a clang and a brazen blare,
Forth from the rosy wine and the feast
Comes the god with the flame-flaked hair ;
The hoofs of his horses ring
On the golden stones, and the wheels
Of his chariot burn and sing,
And the earth beneath him reels;
And forth with a rush and a rout
His myriad angels run,
And the world is awake with a shout,
' He is coming ! The sun ! The sun ! '

There is an isle in an unfurrowed sea
That I wot of, whereon the whole year round
The apple-blossoms and the rosebuds be
In early blooming ; and a many sound
Of ten-stringed lute, and most mellifluous breath
Of silver flute, and mellow half-heard horn,
Making unmeasured music. Thither Death
Coming like Love, takes all things in the morn
Of tenderest life, and being a delicate god,
In his own garden takes each delicate thing
Unstained, unmellowed, immature, untrod,
Tremulous betwixt the summer and the spring :
The rosebud ere it come to be a rose,
The blossom ere it win to be a fruit,
The virginal snowdrop, and the dove that knows
Only one dove for lover ; all the loot
Of young soft things, and all the harvesting
Of unripe flowers. Never comes the moon
To matron fulness, here no child-bearing
Vexes desire, and the sun knows no noon.
But all the happy dwellers of that place
Are reckless children gotten on Delight
By Beauty that is thrall to Death ; no grace,
No natural sweet they lack, a chrysolite
Of perfect beauty each. No wisdom comes
To mar their early folly, no false laws
Man-made for man, no mouthing prudence numbs
Their green unthought, or gives their licence pause ;
Young animals, young flowers, they live and grow,
And die before their sweet emblossomed breath
Has learnt to sigh save like a lover's. Oh !
How sweet is Youth, how delicate is Death !