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;

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—

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.