...Ibsen, I stood at the corner of 7th Street and declaimed whatever happened to come into my head: O Rhodora, if the sages ask thee why This charm is wasted on earth and sky, Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing, Then beauty is its own excuse for...

...looks. By the next line, though, the poem commences to sap itself. "Spreading" its "leafless blooms in a damp nook / To please the desert and the sluggish brook," the Rhodora loses its singularity: The very intimacy of its revelation is lost to the ubiquity of suitors....

...to celebrate. "The Rhodora" describes the sudden meeting of poet and wildflower in a damp nook where "The purple petals, fallen in the pool, / Made the black water with their beauty gay." If the rhodora should be asked to explain why she wastes her beauty on a spot where few can see it,...

...sea-winds pierced our solitudes, I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods, Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook, To please the desert and the sluggish brook. Rohdora! If the sages ask thee why This charm is wasted on the earth and sky, Tell them, dear, that...

...is often striking, and he had a gift of vivid, economical specification, which he too seldom used: The purple petals fallen in the pool, Made the black water with their beauty gay. Venus, when her son was lost, Cried him up and down the coast, In hamlets, palaces and parks, And told...

...sea-winds pierced our solitudes, I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods, Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook, To please the desert and the sluggish brook. (412) insistence of the human subject who first finds the flower and then identifies with this natural...

...sea-winds pierced our solitudes, I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods, Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook, To please the desert and the sluggish brook, The purple petals, fallen in their pool, Made the black water with their beauty gay; Here might the red-bird come his plumes to...

...blooms in a damp nook, To please the desert and the sluggish brook, The purple petals, fallen in their pool, Made the black water with their beauty gay; Here might the red-bicd come his plumes to cool, And court the flower that cheapens his array. Rhodora! if the sages...

...sea-winds pierced our solitudes, I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods, Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook, To please the desert and the sluggish brook. The purple petals, fallen in the pool, Make the black water with their beauty gay; Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool, And court...

...sea-winds pierced our solitudes, I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods, Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook, To please the desert and the sluggish brook, The purpler petals, fallen in the pool, Made the black water with their beauty gay; Here might the red-bird...