On The Mantelpiece

A thousand years went to her making, A thousand years of experiments in pastes and glazes. But now she stands In all the glory of the finest porcelain and the most delicate paint, A Dresden china shepherdess, Flaunted before a tall mirror On a high mantelpiece. ' Beautiful shepherdess, I love the little pink rosettes on your shoes, The angle of your hat sets my heart a singing. Drop me the purple rose you carry in your hand That I may cherish it, And that, at my death, Which I feel is not far off, It may lie upon my bier. ' So the shepherdess threw the purple rose over the mantelpiece, But it splintered in fragments on the hearth. Then from below there came a sound of weeping, And the shepherdess beat her hands And cried: ' My purple rose is broken, It was the flower of my heart. ' And she jumped off the mantelpiece And was instantly shattered into seven hundred and twenty pieces. But the little brown cricket who sang so sweetly Scuttled away into a crevice of the marble And went on warming his toes and chirping.