THE bush whereon the blushing rose, when things are favorable, grows, is looking sick and blue; to keep the bush from going dead, I give it arsenate of lead, and London purple, too. I wash the stem with kerosene, and dope the leaves with Paris green, and other compounds weird; and as I use the poisoned dope, I feel the shriveling of hope, and tears stream down my beard. And as I toil I wonder why the lovely things must always die, without a good excuse; the jimpson and the mullein thrive, the cockleburs are still alive—you cannot cook their goose. A Keats will perish in his youth, while some old cross-roads bard, forsooth, will live two hundred years; a horse dies early, as a rule, but for a century the mule will wag its misfit ears. The cow that gives all kinds of milk, whose butterfat is fine as silk, will seek the railway track, and there she'll stand and chew her gums, until a locomotive comes, and telescopes her back. With thoughts like these I stand and spray my dying rosebush every day, and know it's all in vain, for everything that's lovely dies, and man can only swat the flies in sorrow and in pain. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...HITS AND RUNS by CARL SANDBURG THE PURPLE COW by FRANK GELETT BURGESS AGAINST HOPE by ABRAHAM COWLEY PASSION AND LOVE by PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR IN HOSPITAL: 21. ROMANCE by WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY |