Eugene Field

The Wind

(THE TALE)

Cometh the Wind from the garden, fragrant and full of sweet singing—
Under my tree where I sit cometh the Wind to confession.

"Out in the garden abides the Queen of the beautiful Roses—
Her do I love and to-night wooed her with passionate singing;
Told I my love in those songs, and answer she gave in her blushes—
She shall be bride of the Wind, and she is the Queen of the Roses!"

"Wind, there is spice in thy breath; thy rapture hath fragrance Sabaean!"

"Straight from my wooing I come—my lips are bedewed with her kisses—
My lips and my song and my heart are drunk with the rapture of loving!"

(THE SONG)

The Wind he loveth the red, red Rose,
  And he wooeth his love to wed:
    Sweet is his song
    The Summer long
  As he kisseth her lips so red;
And he recketh naught of the ruin wrought
  When the Summer of love is sped!

(AGAIN THE TALE)

Cometh the Wind from the garden, bitter with sorrow of winter.

"Wind, is thy love-song forgot? Wherefore thy dread lamentations?"

Sigheth and moaneth the Wind: "Out of the desolate garden
Come I from vigils with ghosts over the grave of the Summer!"

"Thy breath that was fragrant anon with rapture of music and loving,
 It grieveth all things with its sting and the frost of its wailing displeasure."

The Wind maketh ever more moan and ever it giveth this answer:
"My heart it is numb with the cold of the love that was born of the
Summer—
I come from the garden all white with the wrath and the sorrow of Winter;
I have kissed the low, desolate tomb where my bride in her loveliness
lieth
And the voice of the ghost in my heart is the voice that forever
outcrieth!"

(AGAIN THE SONG)

The Wind he waileth the red, red Rose
  When the Summer of love is sped—
    He waileth above
    His lifeless love
  With her shroud of snow o'erspread—
Crieth such things as a true heart brings
  To the grave of its precious dead.