All roses are alike to me,
Alike to me the myriad flowers,
That May-time, in its sunny glee,
Spreads on the valleys and the bowers;
But in the garland of young girls,
Which glows in fragrance to the sun,
I worship, and I see but one,
My pearl of flowers—my flower of pearls!
Each planet and each wandering star,
Dancing in circles in the skies,
Lulls some young fool to dreams afar,
But all are sisters in my eyes;
For all the lights that round us shine,
All that a maddened brain romances,
Are nothing, darling, to the glances
From those soft, loving eyes of thine.
The nightingale may sing and die,
And still on that same linden-tree,
Another bird will love and sigh,
Before the first has ceased to be.
The sweetest songs we mortals hear
In this dull struggling world below,
All fail to sooth our grief, our woe,
Save thy soft thrilling accents, dear.
Let all the sweet flowers fade away,
Let all the song-birds die of love,
The cheery light forsake the day,
The stars fade in the heavens above;
Rather than that my rose of girls,
My star of gold, my passionate song,
Should suffer half a moment’s wrong—
My pearl of flowers, my flower of pearls!
This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on July 12, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.
