~ The Violet Pressed in a Copy of Shakespeare – Duncan Campbell Scott

Here in the innermost of the master’s heart

This violet crisp with early dew

Has come to leave her beauty and to part With all her vivid hue.

And while in hollow glades and dells of musk,

Her fellows will reflower in bands,

Clasping the deeps of shade and emerald dusk,

With sweet inviolate hands,

She will lie here, a ghost of their delight,

Their lucent stems all ashen grey,

Their purples fell into pull white,

Dull as the bluebird’s alula.

But her where human passions pulse in power,

She will transcend our Shakespeare’s art,

From Desdemona to a smothered flower,

Will leap the tragic heart.

And memory will recall in keener mood

The precinct fair where passion grew,

The stars within the water in the wood,

The moonlit grove, the odorous dew.

The voice that throbbed along with the summer dark

Will float and pause and thrill,

In lonely cadence silvern as the lark,

To fail below the hill.

The reader will grow weary of the play,

Finding his hearts half-understood,

And with the young moon in the early dusk will stray

Beside the starry water in the wood. ~

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