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A HOUSE that
lacks, seemingly, mistress and master,
With doors
that none but the wind ever closes,
Its floor all
littered with glass and with plaster;
It stands in a
garden of old-fashioned roses.
I pass by that way in
the gloaming with Mary;
'I wonder,' I say, 'who the
owner of those is.
'Oh, no one you know,' she answers
me airy,
'But one we must ask if we want any roses.'
So we must join hands in the dew coming coldly
There
in the hush of the wood that reposes,
And turn and go
up to the open door boldly,
And knock to the echoes
as beggars for roses.
'Pray, are you within there,
Mistress Who-were-you?'
'Tis Mary that speaks and our
errand discloses.
'Pray, are you within there? Bestir
you, bestir you!
'Tis summer again; there's two come
for roses.
'A word with you, that of the singer
recalling--
Old Herrick: a saying that every maid
knows is
A flower unplucked is but left to the
falling,
And nothing is gained by not gathering
roses.'
We do not loosen our hands' intertwining
(Not caring so very much what she supposes),
There
when she comes on us mistily shining
And grants us by
silence the boon of her roses.
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