Page:The torrent and The night before.djvu/28

 THE MIRACLE " brother, dearest friend, when I am dead, And you shall see no more this face of mine, Let nothing but red roses be the sign Of the white life I lost for him," she said; "No, do not curse him,—pity him instead; Forgive him!—forgive me! . . . God’s anodyne For human hate is pity; and the wine That makes men wise, forgiveness. I have read Love's message, in love's murder, and I die." And so they laid her just where she would lie,— Under red roses. Red they bloomed and fell; But when flushed autumn and the snows went by, And spring came,—lo, from every bud's green shell Burst a white blossom.—Can love reason why?

HORACE TO LEUCONOE I you not, Leuconoe, to pore With unpermitted eyes on what may be Appointed by the gods for you and me, Nor on Chaldean figures any more. 'T were infinitely better to implore The present only:—whether Jove decree More winters yet to come, or whether he Make even this, whose hard, wave-eaten shore Shatters the Tuscan seas to-day, the last— Be wise withal, and rack your wine, nor fill Your bosom with large hopes; for while I sing, The envious close of time is narrowing:— So seize the day,—or ever it be past— And let the morrow come for what it will.

THE BALLADE OF DEAD FRIENDS As we the withered ferns By the roadway lying, Time, the jester, spurns