Rosa sea meet, or may be the illusion of the tide 

 Mystica. refluent from green depths. On the weedy 

 rocks I cannot see even a sleeping seamew : 

 on the havened stretch of yellow-white sand 

 a dotterel runs to and fro in sudden aimless 

 starts, but as suddenly is still, is all but unseen 

 with her breast against a rock covered with 

 the blue-bloom of mussels, and now is like a 

 shadow licked up by twilight. 



Along the husht garden-ways beside me 

 and behind me are roses, crimson and yellow, 

 sulphur-white and pale carnation, the blood- 

 red damask, and a trailing-rose, brought from 

 France, that looks as though it were live flame 

 miraculously stilled. It is the hour of the 

 rose. Summer has gone, but the phantom- 

 summer is here still. A yellow butterfly 

 hangs upon a great drooping Marechal Niel: 

 two white butterflies faintly flutter above a 

 corner-group of honey-sweet roses of Provence. 

 A late hermit-bee, a few lingering wasps, and 

 the sweet, reiterated, insistent, late-autumn 

 song of the redbreast. That is all. It is the 

 hour of the rose. 



" Pest Fkeure de la rose 



L'heure d'ambre etflamme, 

 Quand dans mon dme 

 Je sens une Blanche Rose 

 Eclose." 



338 



