Mandragora/The Little Flame

by John Cowper Powys

THE LITTLE FLAME

TRAMPLE it fiercely down,
It will not burn your feet.
The little flame that your savage frown
    Hated as it went up and down,
Because it had no heat.

Trample it in the dust!
    It only carries in it
The far horizon of one hope,
    One faith, one trust, one horoscope,
Cast by one fatal minute.

Press your heel hard on it there.
    You know it cannot burn.
It can only answer a hurt life's prayer.
    With an ecstasy delicate as air,
That you have yet to learn.

Look! It still licks the ground.
    Out with it! Turn it to clay!
The wind will blow with its ancient sound.
    When that flame is buried underground
And you have gone your way.

No, it never had heat,
    Love sometimes shows that lack!
But you — you have spurned beneath your feet,
    What one day, weary of wine and meat.
In vain you'll summon back.

A pale flame, after your fierce sunsets!
Yet the Spring came at its call,
Bringing windflowers and pansies and violets,
And the rosemary that has no regrets
And lasts the longest of all.

Pray, child, to the gods that when you've found
What the heats of passion prove.
You sob not aloud with a piteous sound.
Over the plot of trampled ground,
Wherein you murdered love.