Explore "There was a Rose" by Madison Cawein on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
/ There was a rose in Eden once: it grows / On Earth now, sweeter for its rare perfume: / And Paradise is poorer by one bloom, / And Earth is richer. In this blossom glows / More loveliness than old seraglios / Or courts of kings did ever yet illume: / More purity, than ever yet had room / In soul of nun or saint. -- O human rose, -- / Who art initial and sweet period of / My heart's divinest sentence, where I read / Love, first and last, and in the pauses love; / Who art the dear ideal of each deed / My life aspires by to some high goal, -- / Set in the haunted garden of my soul!