Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, WILD CHERRY BRANCHES, by AGNES MARY F. ROBINSON


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

WILD CHERRY BRANCHES, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Lithe sprays of freshness and faint perfume
Last Line: Let life or death be the fruit.
Alternate Author Name(s): Duclaux, Madame Emile; Darmesteter, Mary; Robinson, A. Mary F.
Subject(s): Cherry Trees


I.

LITHE sprays of freshness and faint perfume,
You are strange in a London room;
Sweet foreigners come to the dull, close city,
Your flowers are memories, clear in the gloom,
That sigh with regret and are fragrant with pity.

II.

Flowers, a week since your long, sweet branches
Swayed, hardly seen, in the dusk overhead;
(We live, but the bloom on our living is dead).
Ah! look, where the white moon launches
Her skiff in the skies where the roof-tops spread,

III.

Like rocks on her course. But she rose not so
Through your wavering sprays, when the April weather
Smelt only of flowers a week ago --
On your stems, in my heart, did such blossoms blow!
Let us sigh all together!

IV.

Your sigh is, perchance, for the neighbouring bushes
With soft, yellow palms, or the song of the thrushes;
But mine for none of the birds that sing,
No flower of the spring,
But for two distant eyes and a voice that hushes.

V.
Such light and music, O blossom,
Were ours when I plucked you one moonrise, and you
Remember in fragrance her smile that you knew,
As you lived in her hand, as you lay on her bosom
Once, for a moment, and blossomed anew.

VI.

As I took you I looked, half in awe, where my friend
Crowned with completeness
All heaven's peace and the whole earth's sweetness;
So does her soul all souls transcend,
So, in my love for her, all loves blend.

VII.

For more than the vast everlasting heaven
Declares in its infinite mute appeal
To hearts that feel,
More than the secret and solace of even
Know of God, may a love reveal.

VIII.

For then indeed it was clear to my soul
That in loving the one I loved the whole,
Fulfilled all aims, attained every goal;
And God was with me, eternity round me,
Though Life still bound me.

IX.

Past is that hour; but the heart's trouble lessens
Because it has been.
When I die, when free of its selfish screen
The god in me soars to the Godhead, the Presence
May seem to it first as the love once seen.

X.

We, flowers, have lived to our blossoming hour,
And not in vain did we rise from the root;
Whether we perish or ripen to power,
We know what sweetness it is to flower
Let life or death be the fruit.





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