All Life's Sweets

Only a withered rose-bud:
Withered, and dried, and old;




But I would not toss it downward,
Not for a crown of gold.




For the heart of that tiny rose-bud
Holds the hope of my life within;




It does not whisper like other buds,
Sadly, "what might have been,"

But it whispers what will, and shall be;
It tells of the golden past,
Of the hours that were
         so fraught with love,
So sweet that they could not last.

It tells of the wondrous summer days
When we wandered among the corn;

 

Ah! then it was that all life's sweets
Within my heart were born.
                      -F. Michener (1884)