ROSE MOON
A little while to walk with thee, dear child;
  To lean on thee my weak and weary head;
 Then evening comes: the winter sky is wild,
  The leafless trees are black, the leaves long dead. A little while to hold thee and to stand,
  By harvest-fields of bending golden corn;
 Then the predestined silence, and thine hand,
  Lost in the night, long and weary and forlorn. A little while to love thee, scarcely time
  To love thee well enough; then time to part,
 To fare through wintry fields alone and climb
  The frozen hills, not knowing where thou art. Short summer-time and then, my heart's desire,
  The winter and the darkness: one by one
 The roses fall, the pale roses expire
  Beneath the slow decadence of the sun.
- Earnest Dowson
An elegiac perfume for the waning hour between harvest and snowfall, this is a scent that is tender, rueful, and mournful, carrying the weight of absence like a shroud. Sunlit rose petals fading beneath a silvering sky, dusted with warm hay and cold orris, gleaming with resinous red benzoin and sorrowful elemi.
Art by Drew Rausch!
