Red Poppies — White Roses [poem by Marie E. J. Pitt]

[Editor: This poem by Marie E. J. Pitt was published in The Horses of the Hills and Other Verses (1911).]

Red Poppies — White Roses.

Red poppy blooms a-flaunting
Bold lips to every bee,
White roses’ perfume haunting
The very soul of me
With touches light and taunting
On chords of memory.

Red poppies, death-o’ertaken,
White roses turned to dust —
In larger lands unshaken
By mould or moth or rust,
Will life wake love-forsaken? —
Behold, the gods are just!

Red sunrise, white moon-setting,
The seasons wax and wane,
Nor heed the torrents fretting
To mingle with the main,
Nor Sorrow’s salt dews wetting
Life’s perished blooms in vain.

Beside the stream’s in-flowing,
Betwixt twin-paths of fate
One stands aghast at going —
And one sore-grieved to wait
Recalls red poppies blowing —
White roses at the gate.

Source:
Marie E. J. Pitt, The Horses of the Hills and Other Verses, Melbourne: Specialty Press, 1911, page 77