A Minor Chord
A Minor Chord
Original Text
Orchids: Poems by Theodore Wratislaw (London: Leonard Smithers, 1896): 41. Facsimile edition (New York and London: Garland, 1984). PR 6045 R34 C3 1984
1I shudder from your beauty. Hour by hour
2I dread the time that comes and will not spare
3The colourless strange yellow of your hair,
4More fain than lips of lovers to devour
5That thin wide mouth of yours, a sanguine flower,
6A joy, a dream, a wonder and a snare!
7That comes to shake into the driving air
8Green leaf and pink bud from thine apple-bower.
9I know that even as Autumn ere he goes
11So time shall spoil and scatter shred by shred
12Your face's worn white beauty hard and cold,
13Shall wholly ruin your hair's sweet pallid gold,
14And waste your mouth's fierce strip of poppied red.
Notes
10] rayonnant: shining. Back to Line
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire
RPO Edition
2005
Rhyme
Form