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Pine,
Rose and Fleur de Lis
by
Susie Frances Harrison
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THE
FIRST CHILL
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Did
you not think last night that the summer was over?
That gone were the bees and the broom, and that
gone was the
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clover, |
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That
dead were the flowers in your delicate basket of
wire,
That dead were the trailing tongues of the creeper’s
autumnal |
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fire?
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Did you not say to me then that a frost must be
falling, |
5 |
Ere
we both saw on the terrace of your sweet mother
calling?
Did we not stand there together and gaze at the
gray
That frightened the flushing rose from the cheek
of the dying day?
Together, and yet apart, while your roses were
paling,
And you grew cold and white, and I too, and all
sweet speech
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seemed
failing; |
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If
I spoke, I offended, or thought so; so what could
I do
But be silent, nor risk the chance of further offence
against you?
Did I not offer, sweetheart, that time when we
tarried.
To put on a gossamer bit of a wrap that you carried?
Did you not calmly regard me as one who ignores,
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Just
turn without word or smile, and so leave me, and
vanish
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indoors?
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Did
we not think in truth that the summer was over,
That gone were the bees and the broom, and that
gone was the |
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clover? |
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While
you sat with your feet to the fire, I walked till
I grew
Half-frozen, half hating the world, the climate,
myself, and—you. |
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But now what has happened, that after the wintriest
weather,
The heart of each bird is as light as the tiniest
feather?
The sun is as warm and the grass is ass green as
in June,
And we sing with our hearts and lips, like the birds
to a summer |
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tune.
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| Sweetheart!
Do thou sob no more! If the love were at ending, |
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If
the fault and the fever alike were both beyond mending,
Then might you weep like the woman of tears that
I know,
But not when I strain you thus—not, not when
I hold you so!
What a mistake, love, to think that the summer
was over!
I fancy I saw a bee, and I’m sure I smelt
clover—
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Swear
to forget, child, the sudden, the menacing chill
That darkened and startled the world and our hearts
last night on |
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the
hill! |
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