Classic Poem

To S. C.

What do you know of it, Ossian, Ossian,
Know of the Rose?
Fragrant, encrimsoned, murmuring, murmuring,
‘If I unclose,
Can you read me and all that is hid in my redness,
The love and the hate, the grace and the madness?’
The secret was not in your song, I suppose,
Ossian, Ossian?

But I listened and looked in it, Ossian, Ossian,
Looked in the Rose,
And saw all the red of old battles reviving,
So redly it blows,—
And saw in the night the red dawn of the morning,
And heard the old song of the Cymry returning
To the mysteries of Ind, in the Rune of the Rose,
Ossian, Ossian.