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THE FLOWERING FAGGOTS, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: There was a field called floridus, east of small bethlehem town
Last Line: Howbeit, the tale is handed down, and the field lies near bethlehem town.
Subject(s): Flowers; Innocence; Legends; Roses


There was a field called Floridus, east of small Bethlehem town.
There first the roses that we know found strength to bloom, took root to grow.
So runs the legend, even so,—a legend handed down
From other ages, yet abloom with those first roses' rare perfume!

Learn then how bloomed our roses first. They bloomed to succor wrong.
For a sweet maiden without blame they paled with wrath and blushed with shame.
And none recall that maiden's name, but some recall her song,
"This is my sole and one offense; that I have lived in innocence!"

She walked in early summer dawn beyond the city wall,
And found a young man left for slain, and bent her down to ease his pain,
And helped him thence, and nursed him, fain to squander of her all
That life come back into his cheek, and his eyes ope, and his lips speak.

In her own house this tender girl brought life unto the dead.
Her old blind father tending too, lonely she lived, and little knew
Of men, save blind with strife they grew and slew. So days were sped
She hiding him in secret still lest his fierce foremen find and kill.

Then oped his eyes, his strength returned. He gave rough thanks. He strode
Forth of her house,—and met the eyes of three conspirators in lies
Who knew his wife and spread surmise with leers, and eyes that glowed
With evil light. Meantime had he, with wife and children, ta'en the sea.

So, bursting on the innocent, they haled her forth to die,
And piled the firewood in a field, with no one nigh her fame to shield.
White-faced upon her pyre she kneeled without a moan or cry.
Only she sang her single song, till their blood blenched who wrought the wrong.

What faggots kindled, high they writhed a myriad tongues blood-red.
Yet some were all too green to blaze. Their smoke around her wrought a haze.
She crossed her hands as one who prays. And suddenly, instead
Of every faggot, in that hour a rosebush bloomed in lovely flower!

The kindled faggots, roses red; the unburned, roses white!
God of his grace, and for her prayer, had bloomed them out of fire and air
That innocence no more despair and justice fall aright.
And all the field about was spread with roses white and roses red!

Some say the red had thorns like spears to prick the foul pretense
Of those conspirators in lies, who gasped with awful, dumb surprise
And fled; and others yet surmise the white meant Innocence.
Howbeit, the tale is handed down, and the field lies near Bethlehem town.





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