Classic Poem

At times my songs of love return and shine
Each as a flower of individual head,
Some white, some rosy, — some blood-stained and red, —
Marshalled in one long unimpeded line.
And these, with many tears and thoughts, I twine
To bloom about that fragrant body dead,
That over her mixed petals may be shed,
And spices and sweet incense I combine
To make her beauty more surpassing yet; —
And many months of passion, and pale days,
And nights torn in unutterable ways,
Are as strange flowers with rain of weeping wet, —
Woodbine and spotted mint and mignonette
And roses and white hyacinthine sprays.