London Roses

 by Willa Sibert Cather

London Roses 

'ROWSES, Rowses! Penny a bunch!' they tell you--

Slattern girls in Trafalgar, eager to sell you.

Roses, roses, red in the Kensington sun,

Holland Road, High Street, Bayswater, see you and smell you--

Roses of London town, red till the summer is done.

Roses, roses, locust and lilac, perfuming

West End, East End, wondrously budding and blooming

Out of the black earth, rubbed in a million hands,

Foot-trod, sweat-sour over and under, entombing

Highways of darkness, deep gutted with iron bands.

'Rowses, rowses! Penny a bunch!' they tell you,

Ruddy blooms of corruption, see you and smell you,

Born of stale earth, fallowed with squalor and tears--

North shire, south shire, none are like these, I tell you,

Roses of London perfumed with a thousand years. 

The Tavern 

IN the tavern of my heart

Many a one has sat before,

Drunk red wine and sung a stave,

And, departing, come no more.

When the night was cold without,

And the ravens croaked of storm,

They have sat them at my hearth,

Telling me my house was warm.

As the lute and cup went round,

They have rhymed me well in lay;--

When the hunt was on at morn,

Each, departing, went his way.

On the walls, in compliment,

Some would scrawl a verse or two,

Some have hung a willow branch,

Or a wreath of corn-flowers blue.

Ah! my friend, when thou dost go,

Leave no wreath of flowers for me;

Not pale daffodils nor rue,

Violets nor rosemary.

Spill the wine upon the lamps,

Tread the fire, and bar the door;

So despoil the wretched place,

None will come forevermore. 

A Likeness 

In every line a supple beauty -

The restless head a little bent - 

Disgust of pleasure, scorn of duty,

The unseeing eyes of discontent. 

I often come to sit beside him,

This youth who passed and left no trace 

Of good or ill that did betide him,

Save the disdain upon his face.

The hope of all his House, the brother

Adored, the golden-hearted son, 

Whom Fortune pampered like a mother;

And then, - a shadow on the sun. 

Whether he followed Cæsar's trumpet,

Or chanced the riskier game at home 

To find how favor played the stumpet

In fickle politics at Rome;

Whether he dreamed a dream in Asia

He never could forget by day, 

Or gave his youth to some Aspasia,

Or gamed his heritage away; 

Once lost, across the Empire's border

This man would seek his peace in vain; 

His look arraigns a social order

Somehow entrammelled with his pain.

'The dice of gods are always loaded';

One gambler, arrogant as they, 

Fierce, and by fierce injustice goaded,

Left both his hazard and the play. 

Incapable of compromises,

Unable to forgive or spare, 

The strange awarding of the prizes

He had not fortitude to bear.

Tricked by the forms of things material -

The solid-seeming arch and stone, 

The noise of war, the pomp imperial,

The heights and depths about a throne - 

He missed, among the shapes diurnal,

The old, deep-travelled road from pain, 

The thoughts of men which are eternal,

In which, eternal, men remain.

Ritratto d'ignoto; defying

Things unsubstantial as a dream - 

An Empire, long in ashes lying -

His face still set against the stream. 

Yes, so he looked, that gifted brother

I loved, who passed and left no trace, 

Not even - luckier than this other -

His sorrow in a marble face.