The Silver Sage
Are you ready? Come on along and read some homespun poetry as well as a jot and tittle regarding distinguished poets and their works. Gael offers a positive balance of her own nostalgia notes and poetic meanderings with those of others. [Editor's note: Gael no longer contributes to Silver Planet, but we have made her archived blog entries available as a service to our readers.]
Blooms: The Last Rose of Summer
From a beautiful poem by Thomas Moore
My friend, who lives a few miles south of me, has a lovely array of flowers in her garden. Her yellow rosebush is particularly prolific. Her beautiful variegated roses sometimes try to outdo their gorgeous yellow sisters. Personally, I think there is an unseen, secret flora competition among my friend’s blooms to determine who will be the last rose of summer once autumn has arrived with wind and shiver-inducing temperature drops. This year the winner is . . . both!
I imagine the daisies applauding when no one is looking!
The common phrase the last rose of summer is from the beautiful poem by Thomas Moore (1779-1852), who wrote it in 1805. Moore was called “a poet of the soul.” He was Ireland’s national poet and a friend of Lord Byron and Percy Shelley. The song by the same name was published in the mid-1800s in a collection of Moore’s works called Irish Melodies. It was made popular in recent years by soprano Charlotte Church and the Irish Tenors.
Just in case someone out there has never enjoyed this poem’s timeless beauty, I will share part of it for your reading pleasure today.
| The Last Rose of Summer 'Tis the last rose of summer Left blooming alone; All her lovely companions Are faded and gone; No flower of her kindred, No rosebud is nigh, To reflect back her blushes, To give sigh for sigh. I'll not leave thee, thou lone one! To pine on the stem; Since the lovely are sleeping, Go, sleep thou with them. Thus kindly I scatter, |
By Gael Stuart
The Silver Sage Blog
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