A Lament I have thrown down my lute in a passion of sorrow The song I invoke lieth dumb on the string The sweetest of chords that my music may borrow Will never awaken the echoes of spring She lived in a garden where flowers were upraising Their glorious heads to the kiss of the breeze And she in her beauty, majestic ; amazing Far fairer than these She died with the autumn when mists were enshrouding The flowers she had loved with a garment of grey The sky of the summer was tearfully clouding And wept as they bore the frail body away She saw not the poppies she marked not the petal That fall to the sorrowful ground from the bloom And over her form as a veil the white nettle To weep on her tomb A. Payne Garnett del 1899