Explore "Warned" by Ella Wheeler Wilcox on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
They stood at the garden gate. / By the lifting of a lid / She might have read her fate / In a little thing he did.
He plucked a beautiful flower; / Tore it away from its place / On the side of the blooming bower; / And held it against his face.
Drank in its beauty and bloom, / In the midst of his idle talk; / Then cast it down to the gloom / And dust of the garden walk.
Ay, trod it under his foot, / As it lay in his pathway there; / Then spurned it away with his boot, / Because it bad ceased to be fair.
Ah! the maiden might have read / The doom of her young life then; / But she looked in his eyes instead, / And thought him the king of men.
She looked in his eyes and blushed, / She hid in his strong arms' fold; / And the tale of the flower, crushed / And spurned, was once more told.