Part 15 (1/2)

NORMAN GALE

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 suns.h.i.+ne 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 Marechal 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

FOUR O'CLOCKS

It is mid-afternoon. Long, long ago Each morning-glory sheathed the slender horn It blew so gayly on the hills of morn, And fainted in the noontide's fervid glow.

Gone are the dew-drops from the rose's heart-- Gone with the freshness of the early hours, The songs that filled the air with silver showers, The lovely dreams that were of morn a part.

Yet still in tender light the garden lies; The warm, sweet winds are whispering soft and low; Brown bees and b.u.t.terflies flit to and fro; The peace of heaven is in the o'erarching skies.

And here be four-o'clocks, just opening wide Their many colored petals to the sun, As glad to live as if the evening dun Were far away, and morning had not died!

JULIA C. R. DORR

ASKING FOR ROSES

A house that lacks, seemingly, mistress and master, With doors that none but the wind ever closes, Its floor all littered with gla.s.s and with plaster; It stands in a garden of old-fas.h.i.+oned roses.

I pa.s.s by that way in the gloaming with Mary; ”I wonder,” I say, ”who the owner of those is.”

”Oh, no one you know,” she answers me airy, ”But one we must ask if we want any roses.”

So we must join hands in the dew coming coldly There in the hush of the wood that reposes, And turn and go up to the open door boldly, And knock to the echoes as beggars for roses.

”Pray, are you within there, Mistress Who-were-you?”

'Tis Mary that speaks and our errand discloses.

”Pray are you within there? Bestir you, bestir you!

'Tis summer again; there's two come for roses.

”A word with you, that of the singer recalling-- Old Herrick: a saying that every man knows is A flower unplucked is but left to the falling, And nothing is gained by not gathering roses.”

We do not loosen our hands' intertwining (Not caring so very much what she supposes), There when she comes on us mistily s.h.i.+ning And grants us by silence the boon of her roses.

ROBERT FROST