Anytime Evelyn uses the rose symbolically, one wonders if she was writing of her beloved little sister Rose.
Lullaby to One Recently from Heaven
Down the centuries of rose,
down the centuries of dreams
you came
white-cloud sweet,
rose sweet,
rose dear;
down the centuries to now,
across the forever dust of forever,
new name,
white-hearted new name
(sounding beat of the Heart of God)
Wake us with the story
sing us the song
before we sleep again, Love;
before you sleep, Love
before you sleep!
* * * * *
Evelyn Coffey
Your wondering is true. We had asked her about this once, whether her references to the flower were references to her sister, and her response was "Well, of course...." Evelyn's heart and mind were inhabited by Rose; they remained companions, and so her poetry is repeatedly written about, and sometimes as in this one, written TO, her Rose.
ReplyDeleteT.S. Eliot, in section V of Little Gidding in the Four Quartets writes of the rose and the yew tree, the rose being the beauty that is short-lived and the yew being longlasting. how this was true of Evelyn's Rose!
I recall now that she wrote this after visiting a couple with a newborn. She said that when children are born, they are full of heaven, and that each time they fall asleep, they forget more of it. That our job as parents is to teach them of heaven, to remind them of it. This poem was a plea to that child to tell her of Rose there in heaven, before the child sleeps, and forgets about her. She sees the child as one with Rose, the return of a bit of Rose, heavenly as rose is heavenly.
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