Constantia thumb
On June 12, 1997, in Wordplay bookstore in downtown St. John's, I thumbed at
random an edition of Shelley, and on the page with Ozymandias was a poem with
a rose in it. But that day I didn't buy the book. The next day, forgetting
the name of the poem, I decided to walk back to the bookstore to check it
again. As I walked west on Water Street in St. John's, Newfoundland. Radio
station Magic 97 (FM)'s van was playing the song CONSTANCE by Ron and Connie
Hynes from Ron Hynes's CD Face to the Gale. Shortly after that I went into
Wordplay bookstore to buy a card and also while there glanced in the
paperback The Works of P.B.Shelley; Wordsworth Editions, Cumberland House,
England, ISBN 1-85326-408-3. The poem was just before Ozymandias and was To
CONSTANTIA. I wasn't meaning to buy the book, but had to, from the owner
James Baird..
Now here is the poem:
TO CONSTANTIA
The rose that drinks the fountain dew
In the pleasant air of noon
Grows pale and blue with altered hue---
In the gaze of the nightly moon;
For the planet of frost, so cold and bright,
Makes it wan with her borrowed light.
Such is my heart---roses are fair,
And that at best a withered blossom;
But thy false care did idly wear
Its withered leaves in a faithless bosom!
And fed with love, like air and dew,
Its growth----
Of course that is especially significant because of my
September 6, 1991 blue rose vision.
--
https://www.nfld.com/~dalton/dtales.html Salmon on the Thorns (mystic page)
"For she is the perfect creature, natural in every feature
And I am the geek with the alchemists' stone" (Jimmy MacCarthy)