The Rose's Secret

When down the west the new moon slipped,     A curved canoe that dipped and tipped,     When from the rose the dewdrop dripped,     As if it shed its heart's blood slow;     As softly silent as a star     I climbed a lattice that I know,     A window lattice, held ajar     By one slim hand as white as snow:     The hand of her who set me here,     A rose, to bloom from year to year.     I, who have heard the bird of June     Sing all night long beneath the moon;     I, who have heard the zephyr croon     Soft music 'mid spring's avenues,     Heard then a sweeter sound than these,     Among the shadows and the dews     A heart that beat like any bee's,     Sweet with a name and I know whose:     Her heart that, leaning, pressed on me,     A rose, she never looked to see.     O star and moon! O wind and bird!     Ye hearkened, too, but never heard     The secret sweet, the whispered word     I heard, when by her lips his name     Was murmured. Then she saw me there!     But that I heard was I to blame?     Whom in the darkness of her hair     She thrust since I had heard the same:     Condemned within its deeps to lie,     A rose, imprisoned till I die.