Page:Poems Rossetti.djvu/386

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358
A LIFE'S PARALLELS.
Be you a tenderer mistress and be you a warier warden
Of your rose, as sweet as mine, and full as fair to see."

"Nay, a bud once plucked there is no reviving,
Nor is it worth your wearing now, nor worth indeed my own;
The dead to the dead, and the living to the living.
It's time I go within, for it's time now you were gone."

"Good-bye, Milly Brandon, I shall not forget you,
Though it be good-bye between us for ever from to-day;
I could almost wish to-day that I had never met you,
And I'm true to you in this one word that I say."

"Good-bye, Walter. I can guess which thornless rose you covet;
Long may it bloom and prolong its sunny morn:
Yet as for my one thorny rose, I do not cease to love it.
And if it is no more a flower I love it as a thorn."


A LIFE'S PARALLELS.
NEVER on this side of the grave again,
On this side of the river,
On this side of the garner of the grain,
   Never,—