Who was Dorothy Perkins?
I wonder if anyone knows!
Oh, how pretty she must have been 
To give her name to a rose.
Renown dies out like a candle,
Great men sink to their dooms;
But Dorothy Perkins' fame shall last
So long as a garden blooms.

Was she wondrous clever?
Had she wisdom and power?
Or did she do nothing at all but die 
And leave her name to a flower?
What are triumph and glory
That cease like the rattle of drums?
Better to live as the roses live
Whenever the summer comes.

For she returns with the swallows, 
Her memory blossoms anew
When rosebuds tap on the window-pane,
Out in the morning dew.
Who was Dorothy Perkins?
What though nobody knows?
She shall be loved and remembered still
Wherever a garden grows.