POEM

Sitting in my little attic room that spring, I thought a lot about Mary after she went away. Then after a while, I didn’t think about her so much. But when I did, I felt sad. So one day I wrote this poem (that later Grant Still set to music) which I called, “The Breath of a Rose”:1

Love is like dew

On lilacs at dawn:

Comes the swift sun

And the dew is gone.

Love is like star-light

In the sky at morn:

Star-light that dies

When day is born.

Love is like perfume

In the heart of a rose:

The flower withers,

The perfume goes—

Love is no more

Than the breath of a rose,

No more

Than the breath of a rose.