ASHES OF ROSES

by: Mary Elizabeth Blake (1840-1907)

FAIR blue sea, where mirrored lie

The gold brown rock in sunshine resting,

The changeful glory of the sky,

The white-winged gull his swift way breasting--

A world of light and song and bloom,

Where earth is glad and heaven rejoices,

And, floating through my quiet room,

A laughing chime of baby voices.




Half way across the seaward slope

With tall green grasses bending over,

Two sweet eyes bright with love and hope

Laugh up at me amid the clover;

With flutter of a little gown

Whose flying fold the wind upraises,

Her pretty head of golden brown

My darling lifts amid the daisies.




Part of the shining day she seems,

But more divine than all its splendor,

Like some fair light that shines in dreams,

So softly bright, so sweetly tender;

The glow upon the rounded cheek,

The lisping voice in broken sweetness,

More life and love and joy bespeak

Than all the summer's rich completeness.




And yet--alas! the woful chance

That comes to dim the moment's pleasure!

The sparkling eye, the speaking glance,

The heaped-up wealth of June's best treasure,

Do but recall a vanished bliss,

As Memory's hand the curtain raises--

Another head as fair as this,

That lies below the nodding daisies.

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