Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, FLOOD TIME, by FLORA LOUISE HUNN


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

FLOOD TIME, by                    
First Line: Sappho, two thousand years ago
Last Line: The rose is still the queen of flowers.
Subject(s): Flowers; Roses; Sappho (610-580 B.c.)


Sappho, two thousand years ago,
In lovely Lesbos where the sea,
Azure and foam, sobs ceaselessly
Of beauty in its ebb and flow, --
Sappho, in words that linger still
Like distant music on the air,
Proclaimed the rose the fairest fair
Of all the march of flowers that fill
The year.
The perfumed violet,
Narcissus loved of gods and men,
They stir us with their sweetness yet,
They breathe of longed-for beauty; then
Comes lavish Summer, in her train
The spicy pink, the lily tall,
Blue larkspur by the garden wall;
The nightingale for joy or pain
Pours out her song like golden rain,
And June's flood tide brings in the rose.

Half glimpsed within its armor green,
Each folded bud its silken sheen
Unfurls, white as the mountain snows,
Flushed like the tender dawn of day,
Golden as Autumn sunset, gay
With crimson or vermilion dye,
Haunting us with their mystery.
Sappho, your ashes mingle now
With ashes from the scented bough
Some young Greek lover broke for you
When life was fresh and love was new.

You sang, the music still is ours,
The rose is still the queen of flowers.





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