To-night the sea-wind will go moaning from Rosa 

 the west into the dark north : before dawn a Mystica. 

 steely frost will come over the far crests 

 of the hills. To-morrow the garden will 

 be desolate : a garden of phantom dreams. 

 They have waited long, spell-bound ! but the 

 enchantment is fallen ; in a few hours all shall 

 be a remembrance. What has so marvellously 

 bloomed thus late, so long escaped devastating 

 wind and far-drifting rains and the blight of 

 the sea, will pass in a night. Already, a long 

 way off, I hear a singular, faint, humming 

 sound, like stifled bees. So . . . the foam 

 of storm is on the skerries of the seaward 

 isles. Already from the north, a faint but 

 gathering chill comes on the slanting wings 

 of twilight. I rise with a sigh, thinking of 

 an old forgotten refrain in an old forgotten 

 poem : 



" Ged tha thu 'n diugh 'a d' aibheis fhuar, 

 Bha thu nair 'a d'aros righ — " 



"(Though thou art to-day a cold ruin 

 Thou ivert once the dwelling of a king.) " 



In the long history of the Rose, from the 

 time when the Babylonians carried sceptres 

 ornamented now with this flower now with 

 the apple or lotus, to the coming of the 

 Damask Rose into England in the time of 

 Henry VII. : from the straying into English 



339 



