Fancy.

I bought them for a shilling in a common market-place ….
Crimson roses, velvet-petalled, dewy-sweet with old-world grace;
They should have been a corsage at some lovely lady's breast,
Or a token from a lover, to his lips one moment pressed,
Or have bloomed beside a casement where the dreams of youth were sweet,
Or have strewn a fragrant pathway for a bride's white-slippered feet.
Crimson roses, breath of romance, clothed in all their old-world grace … Yet I bou
ght them for a shilling in a common market-place.

Essie S. Summers.

* * *