Soft-scented rose, though dust be your reward
For blossoming in such unequalled ease,
I will despise each wasted tear that’s shed
At your mock funeral. Let tears record

More lasting deaths than yours! I weep for Keats
Whose early death was final! Did it please
The gods to see the eyes of Love, the head
Of Genius rot so soon to earth? Where beats

That heart that held all Beauty to its need?
Where glows that warmth of being which his youth
Gave to his meanest verse? Sweet rose, although
The doom your petals feel each year has freed

Your loveliness and made it part of Truth,
On Keats no birth can Nature now bestow.

Copyright (2006) by Arnold Cantor.
All rights reserved.

[Written in 1958, around the end of February. Note the
unusual mixture of rhyme patterns.]