Explore "Ninon and Roses" by Gilbert Frankau on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Here, in a land where hardly a rose is, / Silkiest blossoms of broidered flowers / Brush my cheek as each tired eye closes, / Haunt my sleep through the desolate hours.
Roses never of nature's making, / Roses loved for a rose-red night, / Roses visioned at dawn-light's breaking / Veiling a bosom as roses white!
Why does the ghost of you linger and stay with me -- / Ghost of the rose-buds that perfumed our bed, / Ghost of a rose-girl who blossomed to play with me -- / Here in a land where the roses are dead?
Day-time and night-time the death-flower blazes, / Saffron at gun-lip and orange and red, / Here where June's rose-tree lies shattered as May's is, / Here where I dream of the nights that are dead --
Nights that were sweet with the scent and the touch of you, / Rose-girl in ninon with buds at your breast, / Rose-girl who promised and granted so much of you, / All that was tender and all that was best.
Growl of the guns cannot shatter the dream of you, / Banish the thought of one exquisite hour, / Or the scent of your hair in the dawn, or the gleam of you / White as white roses through roses a-flower.