29.03.2008, 20:35
Autumn Flowers
The flowers of spring, they come in sweet succession,
Snowdrop and crocus, and mezereon, thick
Studded with blossom upon leafless stick,
And the young ivy, ceaseless in progression;
They triumph in their hour of brief possession.
Then Summer comes, with her voluptuous rose,
And sweet carnation in half-blown repose;
The plant where pious maids discern the passion,
The death by which we live. But I was born
When the good year was like a man of fifty,
When the wild crabtree show'd a naked thorn,
And tall brown fern disguised the red deer's horn;
Like meats upon a board, august yet thriftly,
Large flowers blaze out at intervals forlorn.
The flowers of spring, they come in sweet succession,
Snowdrop and crocus, and mezereon, thick
Studded with blossom upon leafless stick,
And the young ivy, ceaseless in progression;
They triumph in their hour of brief possession.
Then Summer comes, with her voluptuous rose,
And sweet carnation in half-blown repose;
The plant where pious maids discern the passion,
The death by which we live. But I was born
When the good year was like a man of fifty,
When the wild crabtree show'd a naked thorn,
And tall brown fern disguised the red deer's horn;
Like meats upon a board, august yet thriftly,
Large flowers blaze out at intervals forlorn.