A Lonely Lotus

A WIND that wandered through Cathay
Drifted a lotus seed aloft
And dropped it long before our day
On to a mudbank warm and soft.
And ages turned the mud to clay.

And so a million years went by.
And men appeared and found the seed
And underneath a western sky
Have planted it, and the bloom freed
From earth and time rose up on high,

And opened, rivaling our rose.
How feels it in that other clime
And other age, so far from those
That knew it in the deeps of time
Where other vegetation grows,

I wondered. Till I chanced to find
Ono day a faded photograph
Of some festivity designed
Before this century, whereof half
Is fading out of sight and mind.

And in that group, so changed, was I.
All in that moment I had known
How sighed that bloom, if blossoms sigh,
To find, a flower all alone,
A million years had hurried by.