White lilies frail and cold,
With hearts of elfin gold;
Briefer than all brief things your hidden bloom,
Beneath the sombre grove -
Mournful, and dear, and fair as hapless love,
Foreknowing all the nearness of its doom.
White lilies cool and shy,
Delicously ye die,
Before the vesper dews of any morrow!
But now, on windless air,
Your perfume lies, fresh as a woman's hair,
And faint as myrrh the dreams of noon would borrow.
White lilies cold and wan
As hands of swooming love -
As the fair throat whereon
My kisses clomb, to find her mouth's lit flame! -
Ye die, and cannot say
Who passed beneath the April pines today;
And you alone have heard our hidden love,
And known her flow'r-soft name.