Beautiful messengers, fragrant and fair,
Greeting the morning all guiltless of care,
Ready to grace your dark tresses of hair:
Such I commend to you.

Roses I send to you:
Blushingly conscious,
each bud how demure!
Sad that their beauties so briefly endure!
Yet ere they fade may they carry secure,
All I intend to you.

When the rose is faded,
    Memory may still dwell on
Her beauty shadowed,
    And the sweet smell gone.

That vanishing loveliness,
    That burdening breath
No bond of life hath then
    Nor grief of death.

'Tis the immortal thought
    Whose passion still
Makes the changing
    The unchangeable.

Oh, thus thy beauty,
    Loveliest on earth to me,
Dark with no sorrow, shines
    And burns, with Thee.