And pricks the air, in lovely discontent,
With thorns that question still of its intent.

But when it reached the roof-tree, there it clung,
Nor ever farther up its blossoms flung.

O wayward rose, why hast thou ceased to climb?
Hast thou forgot the ardor of thy prime?

"O hearken!"--thus the rose-spray, listening,--
"With what weird music sweet these full hearts ring!

"What mazy ripples of deep, eddying sound,
Rise, touch the roof-tree old, and drift around,

"Bearing aloft the burden musical
Of joys and griefs from human hearts that fall!

"Green stem and fair, flush'd circle I will lay
Along the roof, and listen here alway;

"For rose and tree, and every leafy growth
That toward the sky unfolds with spiry blowth,

"No purpose hath save this, to breathe a grace
O'er men, and in men's hearts to seek a place.

"Therefore, O poet, thou who gav'st to me
The homage of thy humble sympathy,