Explore "Roses and Rue" by Leigh Gordon Giltner on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Something. my senses will scarce recall. / The horror they came in the night to tell. / The mare had galloped riderless home, / Blown and bleeding and flecked with foam, / And they found him there by the sunken wall, / Hurt to the death by the desperate fall. / How it had chanced, he could only tell, / Ere the merciful numbness stole his brain; / How the chestnut rose to the leap and fell. / Then his senses closed on the shocks of pain. / He spoke, they told me, but once again-- / To whisper my name with his struggling breath-- / (Thank God, he suffered so brief a while) / Then peacefully sank on the breast of Death, / Dead, with his lips asmile.
How can I wish him alive again, / Lying so peacefully, placidly still, / With that carven smile on his marble face. / How can I pray that his heart should thrill / To waking and waking's pain? / Lying so peacefully, placidly still. / With the old, sweet smile on his quiet face, / Dead to the sting of a heart's disgrace. / How should I wish him a lesser grace, / How should I strive with a wiser Will? / Yet how can the heart that is reft divine / Death's mystical, measureless charity? / The cry of the stricken king is mine: / "Would I had died for thee!"