Artwork by: April Hugg

Roseau Community School

Art Teacher and Supervisor:

Mary Vatnsdal

Why should this flower delay so long

         To show its tremulous plumes?

Now is the time of plaintive robin-song,

         When flowers are in their tombs.

Through the slow summer, when the sun

         Called to each frond and whorl

That all he could for flowers was being done, why did it not uncurl?

It must have felt that fervid call

         Although it took no heed,

Waking but now, when leaves like corpses fall,

 And saps all retrocede.

Too late its beauty, lonely thing,

         The season's shine is spent,

Nothing remains for it but shivering

         In tempests turbulent.

Had it a reason for delay,

         Dreaming in witlessness

That for a bloom so delicately gay

         Winter would stay its stress?

I talk as if the thing were born

         With sense to work its mind;

Yet it is but one mask of many worn

         By the Great Face behind.

Thomas Hardy

1840 – 1928