Frost To-night
Frost To-night
Poem
Apple-green west and an orange bar;
And the crystal eye of a lone, one star...
And, "Child, take the shears and cut what you will,
Frost to-night - so clear and dead-still."
Then I sally forth, half sad, half proud,
And I come to the velvet, imperial crowd,
The wine-red, the gold, the crimson, the pied*,-
The dahlias that reign by the garden-side.
The dahlias I might not touch till to-night!
A gleam of shears in the fading light,
And I gathered them all, -the splendid throng,
And in one great sheaf I bore them along.
. . . . .
In my garden of Life with its all late flowers
I heed a Voice in the shrinking hours:
"Frost to-night - so clear and dead-still"...
Half sad, half proud, my arms I fill.
Notes
*Pied means multicolored.
Written by Edith M. Thomas.