This stanza and the lyric below, which is sung as an interlude to the dialogue, go far toward redeeming the over-ripe sentiment of the poem: O Rose, blossom of mystery, holding within your deeps The hurt of a thousand vigils, the heal of a thousand sleeps, There breathes upon your petals a power from the ends of the earth, Your beauty is heavy with knowledge of life and death and birth. O Rose, blossom of longing—the faint suspense, and the fire, The wistfulness of time, and the unassuaged desire, The pity of tears on the pillow, the pang of tears unshed,— With these your spirit is weary, with these your beauty is fed. The remaining poems of the volume are much more artistic than the first, with the exception of the passages last quoted. “The Rose of Life” is artistically wrought as to form and metre, and subtle in analysis; but, because of its length and that it voices somewhat the same thought as the lyric above, the former must serve to show with what delicacy of interpretation he approaches a theme so well worn, but ever new, as that of the rose. It is chiefly on the symbolistic side that Mr. Roberts considers the subject; and while one may feel that the sentiment cloys at times when a group of poems using the rose as an image are bracketed together, this is the chief criticism of the volume, as the lyrics following the opening poem, “On the Upper Deck,” have both charm and art, and one hesitates between such an one as, “O Little Rose, O Dark Rose,” and the one immediately following it, “The Rose of My Desire.” This, perhaps, has a more compelling mood, though no greater charm of touch than the other: O wild, dark flower of woman, Deep rose of my desire, An Eastern wizard made you Of earth and stars and fire. When the orange moon swung low Over the camphor-trees, By the silver shaft of the fountain He wrought his mysteries. The hot, sweet mould of the garden He took from a secret place To become your glimmering body And the lure of your strange face. From the swoon of the tropic heaven He drew down star on star, And breathed them into your soul That your soul might wander far— On earth forever homeless, But intimate of the spheres, A pang in your mystic laughter, A portent in your tears. From the night’s heat, hushed, electric, He summoned a shifting flame, And cherished it, and blew on it Till it burned into your name. And he set the name in my heart For an unextinguished fire, O wild, dark flower of woman, Deep rose of my desire! Metrically the poem jars in the line, And breathed them into your soul,