Rose-Geranium
A pungent spray of rose-geranium—
A breath of the old life.
It brings up the little five-room cottage where I was born,
And where I grew through a smiling childhood.
The white-bearded grandfather sits in his mended rocking-chair,
His eyes far off, crooning “The Sweet By and By,”
Marked with the tapping of his toe upon the weathered porch-floor,
While the sunshine drizzles through the great oaks.
And there is my grandmother’s kneeling figure,
Turning over the rich black earth with her trowel;
And the kind wrinkles on her face, as she says:
“Didn’t the pansies do finely this year, Clem?
And the scarlet verbenas, and the larkspurs,
And the row of flaming salvia....
Those roses... they’re Maréchal Niels... my favorites.
And little grandson, smell this spray of rose-geranium—
Just think, when grandmother was a little tiny girl
Her grandmother grew them in her yard!”
Clement Wood