The Last Chrysanthemum

Why should this flower delay so long      To show its tremulous plumes?     Now is the time of plaintive robin-song,      When flowers are in their tombs.     Through the slow summer, when the sun      Called to each frond and whorl     That all he could for flowers was being done,      Why did it not uncurl?     It must have felt that fervid call      Although it took no heed,     Waking but now, when leaves like corpses fall,      And saps all retrocede.     Too late its beauty, lonely thing,      The season's shine is spent,     Nothing remains for it but shivering      In tempests turbulent.     Had it a reason for delay,      Dreaming in witlessness     That for a bloom so delicately gay      Winter would stay its stress?     - I talk as if the thing were born      With sense to work its mind;     Yet it is but one mask of many worn      By the Great Face behind.