The Rose In Winter

When last I saw this opening rose     That holds the summer in its hand,     And with its beauty overflows     And sweetens half a shire of land,     It was a black and cindered thing,     Drearily rocking in the cold,     The relic of a vanished spring,     A rose abominably old.     Amid the stainless snows it grinned,     A foul and withered shape, that cast     Ribbed shadows, and the gleaming wind     Went rattling through it as it passed;     It filled the heart with a strange dread,     Hag-like, it made a whimpering sound,     And gibbered like the wandering dead     In some unhallowed burial-ground.     Whoso on that December day     Had seen it so deject and lorn,     So lone a symbol of decay,     Had dreamed of it this summer morn?     Divined the power that should relume     A flame so spent, and once more bring     That blackened being back to bloom, -     Who could have dreamed so strange a thing?