I Spoke to the Violet [poem by John Shaw Neilson]

[Editor: This poem by John Shaw Neilson was published in Beauty Imposes: Some Recent Verse (1938).]

I Spoke to the Violet

Shy one, I said, you can take me away in a breath,
But I like not the coat that you come in — the colour of death.

The silence you come with is sweeter to me than a sound,
But I love not the colour — I saw it go into the ground.

And, though you haunt me with all that is health to a rhyme,
My thoughts are as old as the naked beginning of Time.

Your scent does encompass all beauty in one loving breath,
But I like not the coat that you come in — the colour of death.

Source:
Shaw Neilson, Beauty Imposes: Some Recent Verse, Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1938, page 33