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Consolation

By J. A. Blaikie

WHAT shall I grow,
When unto earth returned,
In peace I shall be laid
There, where so oft we walked in sun and shade ?
Flame-flowers burning as my soul hath burned,
Whitening in passion just as flowers may
Under the fiery sun’s consuming ray ?
No, no ! ah, no !
But so my garden-plot shall be
Sweet set with wilding bloom and grass,
Pale starry flowers there shall arise,
White for my spirit’s thought, pale for mine eyes,
That wheresoe’er you thither come or pass,
Then surely shall you know, and feel, and see,
At last, though late, at last all’s well with me ;
In all my bitter life so sweet a thought,
So dear as this, I have not known—
To rest where singing winds, far-blown
From sea and moor, with singing birds are caught
Amid the fostering grey of apple-trees,

                        296 Consolation

Where spires immortal the green cypresses
Uprear, and praise the eternal blue,
And you shall join me in that quiet land,
And one day wake, and find your dreaming true,
And know me as I am, and understand.

MLA citation:

Blaikie, J. A. “Consolation.” The Yellow Book, vol. 6, July 1895, pp. 295-296. Yellow Book Digital Edition, edited by Dennis Denisoff and Lorraine Janzen Kooistra, 2010-2014. Yellow Nineties 2.0, Ryerson University Centre for Digital Humanities, 2020. https://1890s.ca/YBV6_blaikie_consolation/