A Provence Rose
9781465683403
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
A little slender rose, with leaves of shining green and blossoms of purest white,—a little fragile thing, but fair, they said, growing in the casement in a chamber in a street. I remember my birth country well. A great wild garden, where roses grew together by millions and tens of millions, all tossing our bright heads in the light of a southern sun on the edge of an old, old city—old as Rome—whose ruins were clothed with the wild fig tree and the scarlet blossom of the climbing creepers growing tall and free in our glad air of France. I remember how the ruined aqueduct went like a dark shadow straight across the plains; how the green and golden lizards crept in and out and about amongst the grasses; how the cicala sang her song in the moist, sultry eves; how the women from the wells came trooping by, stately as monarchs, with their water jars upon their heads; how the hot hush of the burning noons would fall, and all things droop and sleep except ourselves; how swift amongst us would dart the little blue winged birds, and hide their heads in our white breasts and drink from our hearts the dew, and then hover above us in their gratitude, with sweet, faint music of their wings, till sunset came. I remember— But what is the use? I am only a rose; a thing born for a day, to bloom and be gathered, and die. So you say: you must know. God gave you all created things for your pleasure and use. So you say. There my birth was; there I lived—in the wide south, with its strong, quivering light, its radiant skies, its purple plains, its fruits of gourd and vine. I was young; I was happy; I lived: it was enough. One day a rough hand tore me from my parent stem and took me, bleeding and drooping, from my birthplace, with a thousand other captives of my kind. They bound a score of us up together, and made us a cruel substitute for our cool, glad garden home with poor leaves, all wet from their own tears, and mossestorn as we were from their birth nests under the great cedars that rose against the radiant native skies. Then we were shut in darkness for I know not how long a space; and when we saw the light of day again we were lying with our dear dead friends, the leaves, with many flowers of various kinds, and foliage and ferns and shrubs and creeping plants, in a place quite strange to us,—a place filled with other roses and with all things that bloom and bear in the rich days of midsummer,—a place which I heard them call the market of the Madeleine. And when I heard that name I knew that I was in Paris.
