Poems: Second Series (Dickinson)/Fringed Gentian

by Emily Dickinson

172 POEMS.

XLVIII.

FRINGED GENTIAN.

GOD made a little gentian;
It tried to be a rose
And failed, and all the summer laughed.
But just before the snows
There came a purple creature
That ravished all the hill;
And summer hid her forehead,
And mockery was still.
The frosts were her condition;
The Tyrian would not come
Until the North evoked it.
"Creator! shall I bloom?"