Her Gift in a Garden
Not for the luckless buds our roots may bear,
Now quite in bloom, now seared and cankered lying,
Will I entreat you, lest they should compare
My sad mortality with the fall of flowers;
But hold with me your chaste communion rare,
And touch with life this mortal case of ours.
For you were born beyond the power of dying:
I die as bounded things die everywhere.
You’re full companionship, I’m silence lonely;
You’re stuff, I’m void; you’re living, I’m decay.
I fall, I think, to twilight ending only,
You lift, I know, to never-ending day.
And knowing living gift was life for me,
In narrow room of rhyme, I fixed it certainly.