Explore "Lethe" by Madison Cawein on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
/ I. There is a scent of roses and spilt wine / Between the moonlight and the laurel coppice; / The marble idol glimmers on its shrine, / White as a star, among a heaven of poppies. / Here all my life lies like a spilth of wine. / There is a mouth of music like a lute, / A nightingale that singeth to one flower; / Between the falling flower and the fruit, / Where love hath died, the music of an hour.
/ II. To sit alone with memory and a rose; / To dwell with shadows of whilom romances; / To make one hour of a year of woes / And walk on starlight, in ethereal trances, / With love's lost face fair as a moon-white rose. / To shape from music and the scent of buds / Love's spirit and its presence of sweet fire, / Between the heart's wild burning and the blood's, / Is part of life and of the soul's desire.