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Classic and Contemporary Poetry


KEEPSAKE by ALBERT SAMAIN

First Line: HER DRESS OF TULLE WAS PATTERNED WITH PALE ROSES
Last Line: AND IT WAS LIKE A SONG THAT WANES AWAY.
Subject(s): DEATH; GRIEF; SINGING & SINGERS; DEAD, THE; SORROW; SADNESS;

Her dress of tulle was patterned with pale roses
And pale rose were her lips, and her eyes cold,
Cold and blue as water dreaming in a wood.
The Tyrrhene sea in friendly languor rolled

Smooth petals cradling there her tenuous life.
Very gently she died, her little feet formed a cross;
And when she sang, the crystal of her voice
Broke in her heart with the blood of her mother's loss.

On her thin wrist an iron armlet lay
With her baptismal name of Stephanie,
Seeming the welded ring of exile's bitterness.

Under the heliotrope mist of perfume's sway
She died, watching the sails upon the sea.
She died in autumn ... toward the winter time ...

And it was like a song that wanes away.



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