I have been in the meadows all the day
and gathered there the nosegay that you see;
Singing within myself as bird or bee
When such do field-work on a morn of May;
But now I look upon my flowers,--decay
Has met them in my hands more fatally
Because more warmly clasped; and sobs are free
To come instead of songs. What do you say,
Sweet counsellors, dear friends? that I should go
Back straightway to the fields, and gather more?
Another, sooth, may do it--but not I;
My heart is very tired--my strength is low
My hands are full of blossoms plucked before,
Held dead within them till myself shall die.
-Elizabeth B. Browning
