The Last Chrysanthemum

 Why should this flower delay so long 
 To show its tremulous plumes? 
Now is the time of plaintive robin-song, 
 When flowers are in their tombs.
 

Through the slow summer, when the sun 
 Called to each frond and whorl 
That all he could for flowers was being done, 
 Why did it not uncurl? 

It must have felt that fervid call 
 Although it took no heed, 
Waking but now, when leaves like corpses fall, 
 And saps all retrocede.
 

Too late its beauty, lonely thing, 
 The season's shine is spent, 
Nothing remains for it but shivering 
 In tempests turbulent.
 

Had it a reason for delay, 
 Dreaming in witlessness 
That for a bloom so delicately gay 
 Winter would stay its stress? 

- I talk as if the thing were born 
 With sense to work its mind; 
Yet it is but one mask of many worn 
 By the Great Face behind.

Biography | Poems | Best Poems | Short Poems | Quotes | Email Poem |

Poems are below...