Explore "The Appeal" by Edith Nesbit on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
All summer-time you said: / "Love has no need of shelter nor of kindness, / For all the flowers take pity on his blindness, / And lead him to his scented rose-soft bed."
"He is a king," you said. / "That I bow not the knee will never grieve him, / For all the summer-palaces receive him. " / But now Love has not where to lay his head.
"He is a god," you said. / "His altars are wherever roses blossom. " / And summer made his altar of her bosom, / But now the altar is ungarlanded.
Take back the words you said: / Out in the rain he shivers broken-hearted; / Summer who bore him has with tears departed, / And o'er her grave he weeps uncomforted.
And you, for all you said, / Would weep too, if when dawn stills the wind's riot, / You found him on your threshold, pale and quiet, / Clasped him at last, and found the child was dead.