ROSA IGNOTA
Vv
OF THE ROSE
“Tuat love and the lover
Are mingled in me
Night shall discover:
Dreams shall not be
The veil of the world that my heart doth disclose :
The long night is over,
And I am the Rose.
“Night, like a cancer,
Spread over my breast;
There was no answer,
No truce to this rest,
That, holding the world in a shower of white snows,
Chilled the mad dancer
Who bore me, the Rose.
“ Day, like a vision,
Before me is fled;
Hate and derision
Have fouled my soft bed.
In the heart of the water the quenched vision glows ;
Unborne, in division,
By me, the world’s Rose.”
Ah! Rose of the mire
That festering runs
Through the lands of desire
In the blaze of the suns ;—
x K 145