Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/373

FERN-LAND ROSE

Pale temptress, the night's revel be thine own,

Till love shall pall and rapture have its fill!

The morn's fresh light still finds me on a throne

Where care is not, nor blissful pains that kill.

JASMINE

Sweet, sweet my breath, oh, sweet beyond compare!

ROSE

Rare, rare the splendors of my regal crown!

BOTH

Choose which thou wilt, bold lover, yet beware

Lest to a luckless choice thou bendest down!

FERN-LAND

I

, where a woven roof

Keeps the prying sun aloof

From wonderland,

From the fairies underland,—

Hither, where strange grasses grow

With their curling rootlets set

'Twixt the black roots serpentine,

Laurel roots that twist and twine

Toward the cloven path below

Of some cloud-born rivulet,—

This way enter

Fern-Land, and from rim to centre

All its secrets shall be thine.

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