God makes Him roses fast, With such magnificent haste, Multitudes, multitudes, In gardens, fields and woods. The roses tell His praise Their little length of days; Testify to His name, Gold on gold, flame on flame. They are scarce here, scarce blown, But they are gone, are flown; The gardener's broom must sweep them And in the darkness heap them. Drift of rose-leaves upon The garden-bed, the lawn: The exquisite thought of God Is scattered, wasted abroad. What of the soul of the rose? It shall not die with those; It shall wake, shall live again In God's rose-garden. It shall climb rose-trellises Before God's palaces; The Eternal Rose shall cover The House of God all over. She shall breathe out her soul And yet living, made whole, Shall offer her oblation Out of her purest passion. She shall know all bliss Where God's garden is: The rose drinking her fill is Of joy with her sister lilies. Where the Water of Life sweet Bathes her from head to feet, The River of Life flows-- There is the Rose. KATHARINE TYNAN THE MYSTERY He came and took me by the hand Up to a red rose tree, He kept His meaning to Himself But gave a rose to me. I did not pray Him to lay bare The mystery to me, Enough the rose was Heaven to smell And His own face to see. RALPH HODGSON THE ROSE And so must life be many-veined; The loves that hurt, the fate that blent My life with myriad lives and ways, The processes that probed and pained, The pencillings of nights and days-- Cross currents, tangling as they went, With oh, such conflict in my soul!-- How should I know that they were meant Just to make living sweet and whole, Just to unclose God's perfect rose? ANGELA MORGAN FOR THESE An acre of land between the shore and the hills, Upon a ledge that shows my Kingdoms three, The lovely visible earth and sky and sea, Where what the curlew needs not, the farmer tills: A house that shall love me as I love it, Well-hedged, and honoured by a few ash trees That linnets, greenfinches, and goldfinches Shall often visit and make love in and flit; A garden I need never go beyond, Broken but neat, whose sunflowers every one Are fit to be the sign of the Rising Sun: A spring, a brook's bend, or at least a pond! For these I ask not, but neither too late Nor yet too early, for what men call content,-- And also that something may be sent To be contented with, I ask of fate. EDWARD THOMAS (EDWARD EASTAWAY) SAMUEL GARDNER