Sallie Bingham

  • Blog
    • My Favorites
    • Full Archives
    • Writing
    • Women
    • Philanthropy
    • My Family
    • Politics
    • Kentucky
    • New Mexico
    • Travel
    • Art
    • Theater
    • Religion
  • Events
  • About
  • Books & Plays
    • Doris Duke
    • Fiction
    • Nonfiction
    • Plays
    • Poetry
    • Anthologies
  • Writing
    • Short Stories
    • Poems
    • Plays
    • Translations
  • Resources
    • Audio
    • Video
    • Print
    • Links
    • Important To Me
    • Biography
  • Contact
 
You are here: Home / My Family / The Last Rose of Summer

The Last Rose of Summer

October 19th, 2012 by  Sallie Bingham   in  My Family, Writing Leave a Comment

Palgrave's The Golden Treasury

My father used to reminisce about “the aunts” who lived in North Carolina, devoted sisters never separated from each other, even by marriage, or from the family home. These may be the two sisters who were so fond of sales at the downtown stores that one of them fell down the stairs and broke her ankle in her rush to get there. If so, you’ll meet them again in “The Blue Box: Three Lives in Letters” which Sarabande Books will publish in 2014.

Whatever their actual identity, these sisters, my father remembered, always sang and accompanied themselves on the piano at this time of year in a duet to the dying of summer, called “The Last Rose of Summer”:

“’Tis the last rose of summer left blooming alone,
All her lovely companions are faded and gone.”

These sisters, my father remembered, always sang and accompanied themselves on the piano at this time of year in a duet to the dying of summer, called “The Last Rose of Summer”

I have two of these final blooms, one white, one red, in my garden here I Santa Fe.

“The Last Rose” joins a group of poems I memorized as a girl, all built around the theme of transience, a word, and a thought, that seem to have dropped away:

“Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, old time is still aflying,
And this same flower that blooms today tomorrow may be dying.”

I didn’t quite believe that sentiment, but it seemed that everyone else did, and so it must hold a truth that would be revealed to me later; as it has been.

I found these poems and many like them in Palgrave’s Golden Treasury, illustrated by Maxfield Parrish, a cherished present. In an assured print, I wrote on the fly leaf, “I like these poems very much. I have larned some of them”—that was the way the verb was pronounced in Kentucky.

I was nine years old.

John Milton’s “Allegro”, all four pages, earned high praise, but less than “Lord Ullin’s Daughter” by “T. Campbell”: “I think this is the very finest poem in this book. I lerned it.”

Chasing his eloping daughter, the father finds her drowning in the sea: “One lovely arm she stretched for aid, And one was round her love.” Even at nine, I knew I would have to choose.

The last lines of Shakespeare’s Fourteenth Sonnet—“For fear of this, hear thou, thou age unbred Ere you were born, was beauty’s summer dead”—inspired this comment “Strang for a lover to say.”

After all, I was only nine.

Palgrave’s has accompanied me through many moves and many more changes, but I know better than to pass it along to my grandchildren. They would be hard pressed to read its 373 pages, full of archaic languages and thoughts, although the girls might resonate to these final lines from another Shakespeare song:

“When birds do sing hey ding a ding:
Sweet lovers love the spring.”

I wrote, with a nine year old’s certainty, “I geass that’s the time to be married.”

Tweet
Share
Share
Buffer
0 Shares

In My Family, Writing Maxfield Parrish Palgrave's Golden Treasury Sarabande Books The Blue Box The Last Rose of Summer

Sallie Bingham is a writer, teacher, feminist activist, and philanthropist.

Sallie's most recent work is titled The Blue Box: Three Lives In Letters, published by Sarabande Books in 2014. Her forthcoming book, The Silver Swan: Searching for Doris Duke, will be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in May 2020.

Sallie's complete biography is available here.

 

Subscribe

Receive Sallie's posts (and more) in Facebook Messenger

You will receive emails at 10am MST (12pm EST) only on days Sallie writes a post. You'll also occationally receive updates of events in your area, or notifications of Sallie's upcoming book releases.

Your email address will not be shared.

 

More comments for this post can be found on Facebook.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

 

You might also like

  • Sallie’s Two Fans — The Blue Box: Three Lives In Letters
    Sallie’s Two Fans — The Blue Box: Three Lives In Letters
    Now that my next book, my thirteenth or fourteenth—I’ve lost track—is only a month away from publication by Sarabande Books, I’m thinking of the three women whose lives my book attempts to encompass: my great-grandmother, my grandmother and...
  • On The Blue Box
    On The Blue Box
    The Blue Box does not share the soft glow that softens the details of so many family histories; its light approaches a glare....
  • Digging Up The Bones – The Blue Box
    Digging Up The Bones – The Blue Box
    As I prepare for publication next month, I face the daunting task of listing all the material I’ve used in The Blue Box, many letters, speeches, bills of sale, wills and genealogies that were stored in the blue box itself....
  • Mother Mary — The Blue Box: Three Lives In Letters
    Mother Mary — The Blue Box: Three Lives In Letters
    Having drawn all she could from that source, desperate to go to college, for which she would have to have a scholarship (none of the women in her family had ever dreamed of college), she “dropped out” in the most literal sense, leaving not ...
  • Naming Names — The Blue Box: Three Lives In Letters
    Naming Names — The Blue Box: Three Lives In Letters
    I realized today...that I never heard anyone in my family or outside of it mention my material grandmother, Sallie Montague Lefroy. This seems particularly strange since it seems I was named for her—seems because no one ever mentioned that...
  • Helena’s Story — The Blue Box: Three Lives In Letters
    Helena’s Story — The Blue Box: Three Lives In Letters
    As I prepare to let go of the previous trove of letters that make up the body of my next book, The Blue Box: Three Lives in Letters, and that detail the lives of my great-grandmother, grandmother and mother, from 1850 to 1931, I realize tha...
 

Recent Comments

  • User AvatarPatrick Moore “ Ditto to Julia's comment - these posts by Sallie, individually & collectively are filled with clarity, penetrating insight & stories touching one's heart & soul. ” – December 03
  • User AvatarLaurie Doctor “ Thank you for this post, and the observations that inspire your writing, which is a solitary act. ” – December 02
  • User AvatarJulia Comer “ Thank you for this exquisite writing which speaks to my heart in profound ways. ” – December 01
  • User AvatarIan McIntyre “ I never thought I could agree with Matt Gaetz about anything. But, here I am. ” – November 29
  • Older »

Listen To Sallie

The Last Word - KSFR

The Last Word - KSFR

June 10th, 2017
Host Abigail Adler and I discuss women, my family and growing up in the South on The Last Word, KSFR - Santa Fe Public Radio.
St. John's College, Santa Fe: Reading from Doris Duke

St. John's College, Santa Fe: Reading from Doris Duke

March 12th, 2017
My first reading from The Silver Swan: In Search of Doris Duke. The reading took place on March 7, 2017 at St. John's College Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Latest Tweets

  • Tweet Avatar
    Sitting alone in a coffee shop, I relish the chance to observe human beings in their Saturday morning routines. I a… https://t.co/9sZhrd1xJo

    1 week ago
    1 Favorite
  • Tweet Avatar
    There is an avidity, even an arrogance, and a superb energy I sometimes detect in those who live alone. "Exquisite… https://t.co/hVsxOqoEBk

    2 weeks ago

Recent Press

New York Social Diary: Sallie on Women, Philanthropy and Doris Duke - “the greatest woman philanthropist of the 20th century.”

The Blue Box

Available Now From Sarabande Books

“...Bingham's box of documents traverses time, offering insights into a world of women who knew their own minds long before the word feminist was ever considered.”

— Kirkus Reviews

 

Read more about The Blue Box

The Blue Box is available now at Powell's, Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble

Copyright © 2019 Sallie Bingham. All Rights Reserved.

Press Materials   —   Contact Sallie

Privacy Policy