To My Class: On Certain Fruits and Flowers Sent Me in Sickness [1]
If spicy-fringed pinks that blush and pale
With passions of perfume, -- if violets blue
That hint of heaven with odor more than hue, --
If perfect roses, each a holy Grail
Wherefrom the blood of beauty doth exhale
Grave raptures round, -- if leaves of green as new
As those fresh chaplets wove in dawn and dew
By Emily when down the Athenian vale
She paced, to do observance to the May,
Nor dreamed of Arcite nor of Palamon, --
If fruits that riped in some more riotous play
Of wind and beam that stirs our temperate sun, --
If these the products be of love and pain,
Oft may I suffer, and you love, again.
____
Baltimore, Christmas, 1880.
Note 1:
A class in English Literature, composed of young girls
who had been studying with Mr. Lanier `The Knighte's Tale' of Chaucer.
-THE END-
Sidney Lanier's poem: To My Class: On Certain Fruits and Flowers Sent Me in Sickness
GO TO TOP OF SCREEN
