I Love Red Poppies

I love red poppies! Imperial red poppies!
Sun-worshippers are they;
Gladly as trees live through a hundred summers
They live one little day.

I love red poppies! Impassioned scarlet poppies!
Ever their strange perfume
Seems like an essence brewed by fairy people
From an immortal bloom.

I love red poppies! Red, silken, swaying poppies!
Deep in their hearts they keep
A magic cure for woe--a draught of Lethe--
A lotus-gift of sleep.

I love red poppies! Soft silver-stemmed, red poppies,
That from the rain and sun
Gather a balm to heal some earth-born sorrow,
When their glad day is done.

'Tis time to sing of roses: of roses all ablow,
To every vagrant passing breeze they dip a courtesy low,
'Tis time to sing of roses! for June is here, you know.

One song for true love's roses of sweetest deepest red,
Some heart will wear you faithfully when life itself hath fled,
And for the white rose sing a song - the white rose for the dead.

And ah! the yellow roses, of brightest, lightest gold,
King Midas must have touched their leaves in mystic days of old,
Or they were made of sunshine, and gilded, fold by fold.

And the roadside rose, sweet-briar, we would remember thee
And the cinnamon rose that evermore enthralls each passing bee,
You old, old-fashioned roses, a-growing wild and free.

'Tis time to sing of roses! of roses all ablow!
They come again, as sweet, my dear, as those of long ago.
'Tis time to sing of roses! for June is here you know.

Across the dusty, foot-worn street
Unblessed of flower or tree,
Faint and far-off - there ever sounds
The calling of the sea.

From out the quiet of the hills,
Where purple shadows lie,
The pine trees murmur, "Come and rest
And let the world go by."

The west wind whispers all night long
"Oh, journey forth afar
To the green and pleasant places
Where little rivers are!"

And the soft and silken rustling
Of bending yellow wheat
Says, "See the harvest moon - that dims
The arc-lights of the street."

Though the city holds thee captive
By trick, and wile, and lure,
Out yonder lies the loveliness
Of things that shall endure.

The river road is wide and fair,
The prairie-path is free,
And still the old earth waits to give
Her strength and joy to thee.

Turn to thy window in the silver hour
That day comes stepping down the hills of night,
Infolded as the leaves infold a flower
By all her rose-leaf robes of misty light.

Then, like a joy born out of blackest sorrow,
The miracle of morning seems to say,
'There is no night without its dear to-morrow,
No lonely dark that does not find the day.'

As children gather daisies down green ways
Mid butterflies and bees,
To-day across the meadows of past days
I gathered memories.

I stored my heart with harvest of lost hours - 
With blossoms of spent years;
Leaves that had known the sun of joy, and hours
Drenched with the rain of tears.

And perfumes that were long ago distilled
From April's pink and white,
Again with all their old enchantment, filled
My spirit with delight.

From out the limbo where lost roses go
The place we may not see,
With all its petals sweet and half-ablow,
One rose returned to me.

Where falls the sunlight chequered by the shade
On meadows of the past,
I gathered blossoms that no sun can fade
No winter wind can blast.