ROSE MOON

A little while to walk with thee, dear child;     To lean on thee my weak and weary head;   Then evening comes: the winter sky is wild,     The leafless trees are black, the leaves long dead.

A little while to hold thee and to stand,     By harvest-fields of bending golden corn;   Then the predestined silence, and thine hand,     Lost in the night, long and weary and forlorn.

A little while to love thee, scarcely time     To love thee well enough; then time to part,   To fare through wintry fields alone and climb     The frozen hills, not knowing where thou art.

Short summer-time and then, my heart's desire,     The winter and the darkness: one by one   The roses fall, the pale roses expire     Beneath the slow decadence of the sun. - Earnest Dowson

An elegiac perfume for the waning hour between harvest and snowfall, this is a scent that is tender, rueful, and mournful, carrying the weight of absence like a shroud. Sunlit rose petals fading beneath a silvering sky, dusted with warm hay and cold orris, gleaming with resinous red benzoin and sorrowful elemi.

Art by Drew Rausch!