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

Lucy C. Bull

MARSH rosemary in Union Square!

How did it ever happen there?

A seaside flower that children pull,

Sold by the bunch and basketful!

Marsh rosemary! that grows by acres

Within a stone’s-throw of the breakers!

The life of our Atlantic coast,

I know not when I love it most:

When it has caught those very hues

The sunset was so loth to lose;

When lying like a purple haze

It neither undulates nor sways;

When by the scythe its ranks are thinned,

Or only furrowed by the wind.

O you whose wistful eyes are wet,

You who are rooted in regret,

Who rarely have within your reach

The ravishment of sky and beach,

Who think the joys of life forsake us

Never again to overtake us,—

Mark how these sprays of rosemary

Dipped in the crimson of the sky,

Steeped in the violet of the sea,

To Union Square have followed me!