Poems (Larcom)/The Rose Enthroned

by Lucy Larcom

THE ROSE ENTHRONED.

IT melts and seethes, the chaos that shall grow
 To adamant beneath the house of life;
In hissing hatred atoms clash, and go
     To meet intenser strife.

And ere that fever leaves the granite veins,
 Down thunders over them a torrid sea:
Now Flood, now Fire, alternate despot reigns,
     Immortal foes to be.

Built by the warring elements, they rise,
 The massive earth-foundations, tier' on tier,
Where slimy monsters with unhuman eyes
     Their hideous heads uprear.

The building of the world is not for you,
 That glare upon each other, and devour:
Race floating after race fades out of view,
     Till beauty springs from power.

Meanwhile from crumbling rocks and shoals of death
 Shoots up rank verdure to the hidden sun;
The gulfs are eddying to the vague, sweet breath
     Of richer life begun;

Richer and sweeter far than aught before,
 Though rooted in the grave of what has been:
Unnumbered burials yet must heap Earth's floor
     Ere she her heir shall win;

And ever nobler lives and deaths more grand,
 For nourishment of that which is to come;
While mid the ruins of the work she planned
     Sits Nature, blind and dumb.

For whom or what she plans, she knows no more
 Than any mother of her unborn child:
Yet beautiful forewarnings murmur o'er
     Her desolations wild.

Slowly the clamor and the clash subside;
 Earth's restlessness her patient hopes subdue;
Mild oceans shoreward heave a pulse-like tide;
     The skies are veined with blue.

And life works through the growing quietness,
 To bring some darling mystery into form:
Beauty her fairest Possible would dress
     In colors pure and warm.

Within the depths of palpitating seas
 A tender tint,—anon a line of grace,
Some lovely thought from its dull atom frees,
     The coming joy to trace:—

A pencilled moss on tablets of the sand,
 Such as shall veil the unbudded maiden-blush
Of beauty yet to gladden the green land;—
     A breathing, through the hush,

Of some sealed perfume longing to burst out,
 And give its prisoned rapture to the air;—
A brooding hope, a promise through a doubt,
     Is whispered everywhere.

And, every dawn a shade more clear, the skies
 A flush as from the heart of heaven disclose:
Through earth and sea and air a message flies,
     Prophetic of the Rose.

At last a morning comes, of sunshine still,
 When not a dewdrop trembles on the grass,
When all winds sleep, and every pool and rill
     Is like a burnished glass

Where a long looked-for guest might lean to gaze;
 When Day on Earth rests royally,—a crown
Of molten glory, flashing diamond rays,
     From heaven let lightly down.

In golden silence, breathless, all things stand;
 What answer waits this questioning repose?
A sudden gush of light and odors bland,
     And, lo,—the Rose! the Rose!

The birds break into canticles around;
 The winds lift Jubilate to the skies;
For, twin-born with the rose on Eden-ground,
     Love blooms in human eyes.

Life's marvellous queen-flower blossoms only so,
 In dust of low ideals rooted fast.
Ever the Beautiful is moulded slow
     From truth in errors past.

What fiery fields of Chaos must be won,
 What battling Titans rear themselves a tomb,
What births and resurrections greet the sun
     Before the rose can bloom!

And of some wonder-blossom yet we dream
 Whereof the time that is infolds the seed;
Some flower of light, to which the Rose shall seem
     A fair and fragile weed.