Arthur L. Phelps. There Was a Rose. Harriet Monroe, ed. Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. 1912-22

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. 1912–22.

There Was a Rose

By Arthur L. Phelps


THERE was a rose that faded where it grew;
There was a bird that could not brook the wind;
There was a sunset whose wild glory thinned
To nothing-wonder and the night’s ash hue.
Pale blossoms, when they quicken, count life sped;	5
And there were purple asters in the fall
Of the cold year that withered by the wall
And died, with all spring’s dreams about them dead.

A rose, a bird, a sunset, and a weed,
A blossom whose death sentence is its sky—	10
Yea, and dead waves that break on sobbing seas.
Man is a faint, frail brother, with no creed
These know not of. Behold, all things must die,
And all the vaunting ages are as these.