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Lanier, Sidney, 1842-1881

"Select Poems of Sidney Lanier"

"*
--
* `Palgrave', p. 89.
--
Much like this last piece in import, and scarcely inferior to it in execution,
is `My life is like the summer rose' of Richard Henry Wilde,
which is familiar to every one.
Paul Hamilton Hayne's `The Red and the White Rose' (`Poems', pp. 231-232)
is an interesting dialogue, which the author concludes by making the former
an "earthly queen" and the latter a "heaven-bound votaress".
Mrs. Browning's `A Lay of the Early Rose' shows that we are not to strive
"for the dole of praise."


To ----, with a Rose

I asked my heart to say [1]
Some word whose worth my love's devoir might pay
Upon my Lady's natal day.
Then said my heart to me:
`Learn from the rhyme that now shall come to thee
What fits thy Love most lovingly.'
This gift that learning shows;
For, as a rhyme unto its rhyme-twin goes,
I send a rose unto a Rose.
____
Philadelphia, 1876.

Notes: To ----, with a Rose

This poem was sent to Mrs. Gibson Peacock, of Philadelphia,
who was one of Mr.


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