The Last Chrysanthemum

Thomas Hardy 1840 (Stinsford) – 1928 (Dorchester, Dorset)



Why should this flower delay so long
   To show its tremulous plumes?
Now is the time of plaintive robin-song,
   When flowers are in their tombs.

Through the slow summer, when the sun
   Called to each frond and whorl
That all he could for flowers was being done,
   Why did it not uncurl?

It must have felt that fervid call
   Although it took no heed,
Waking but now, when leaves like corpses fall,
   And saps all retrocede.

Too late its beauty, lonely thing,
   The season's shine is spent,
Nothing remains for it but shivering
   In tempests turbulent.

Had it a reason for delay,
   Dreaming in witlessness
That for a bloom so delicately gay
   Winter would stay its stress?

- I talk as if the thing were born
   With sense to work its mind;
Yet it is but one mask of many worn
   By the Great Face behind.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

44 sec read
88

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABAB CDCD EFEF GXGX HBHX IJIJ
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 820
Words 148
Stanzas 6
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4

Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy, was not a Scottish Minister, not a Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland nor a Professor of Eccesiastical History at Edinburgh University. more…

All Thomas Hardy poems | Thomas Hardy Books

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