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Home  »  library  »  poem  »  Destiny

C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

Destiny

By Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1836–1907)

THREE roses, wan as moonlight, and weighed down

Each with its loveliness as with a crown,

Drooped in a florist’s window in a town.

The first a lover bought. It lay at rest,

Like flower on flower, that night, on Beauty’s breast.

The second rose, as virginal and fair,

Shrunk in the tangles of a harlot’s hair.

The third, a widow, with new grief made wild,

Shut in the icy palm of her dead child.