"De memoires de Roses on n'a point vu mourir le Jardinier."
The Rose in the garden slipped her bud,
And she laughed in the pride of her youthful
blood,
As she thought of the Gardener standing by—
"He is old—so old ! And he soon will die!"
The full Rose waxed in the warm June air,
And she spread, and spread, till her heart lay
bare;
And she laughed once more as she heard his
tread—
"He is older now. He will soon be dead !"
But the breeze of the morning blew and found
That the leaves of the blown Rose strewed the
ground;
And he came at noon, that Gardener old,
And he raked them softly under the mould.
And I wove the thing to a random rhyme,
For the Rose is Beauty, the Gardener Time.
in The Century.
