Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE ROSEBUSH, by WALT MASON


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE ROSEBUSH, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: The bush whereon the blushing rose, when
Last Line: In sorrow and in pain.
Subject(s): Flowers; Gardens & Gardening; Roses


THE bush whereon the blushing rose, when things are favorable, grows, is looking

sick and blue; to keep the bush from going dead, I give it arsenate of lead, and

London purple, too. I wash the stem with kerosene, and dope the leaves with
Paris green, and other compounds weird; and as I use the poisoned dope, I feel
the shriveling of hope, and tears stream down my beard. And as I toil I wonder
why the lovely things must always die, without a good excuse; the jimpson and
the mullein thrive, the cockleburs are still alive—you cannot cook their
goose. A Keats will perish in his youth, while some old cross-roads bard,
forsooth, will live two hundred years; a horse dies early, as a rule, but for a

century the mule will wag its misfit ears. The cow that gives all kinds of milk,

whose butterfat is fine as silk, will seek the railway track, and there she'll
stand and chew her gums, until a locomotive comes, and telescopes her back. With

thoughts like these I stand and spray my dying rosebush every day, and know it's

all in vain, for everything that's lovely dies, and man can only swat the flies

in sorrow and in pain.





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