On the Mantelpiece

A thousand years went to her making,

A thousand years of experiments in pastes and glazes.

But now she stands

In all the glory of the finest porcelain and the most delicate paint,
A Dresden china shepherdess,
Flaunted before a tall mirror
On a high mantelpiece.
"Beautiful shepherdess,
I love the little pink rosettes on your shoes,
The angle of your hat sets my heart a-singing.

Drop me the purple rose you carry in your hand

That I may cherish it,
And that, at my death,
Which I feel is not far off,
It may lie upon my bier."
So the shepherdess threw the purple rose over the mantelpiece,
But it splintered in fragments on the hearth.
Then from below there came a sound of weeping,
And the shepherdess beat her hands
And cried:

"My purple rose is broken,

It was the flower of my heart."

And she jumped off the mantelpiece
And was instantly shattered into seven hundred and twenty pieces.

But the little brown cricket who sang so sweetly
Scuttled away into a crevice of the marble
And went on warming his toes and chirping.