Hope, that buds in lover's heart, Lives not through the scorn of years; Time makes love itself depart; Time and scorn congeal the mind Looks unkind Freeze affection's warmest tears. Time shall make the bushes green; Blighted love shall never blow! Translation of LORD STrangford. CHORUS OF FLOWERS. WE are the sweet flowers, (Think, whene'er you see us, what our beauty saith ;) Utterance, mute and bright, Of some unknown delight, The honey-dropping moon, On a night in June, Kisses our pale pathway leaves, that felt the bridegroom pass. Age, the withered clinger, And wraps the thought of his last bed in his childhood's daisies. See (and scorn all duller Taste) how Heaven loves color; How great Nature, clearly, joys in red and green; What sweet thoughts she thinks And a thousand flushing hues made solely to be seen; See her whitest lilies Chill the silver showers, And what a red mouth is her rose, the woman of her flowers. Uselessness divinest, Of a use the finest, Painteth us, the teachers of the end of use; Travelers, weary-eyed, Bless us, far and wide; We fill the air with pleasure, by our simple Unto sick and prisoned thoughts we give sud breath: All who see us love us We befit all places; den truce; Not a poor town window Loves its sickliest planting, Unto sorrow we give smiles—and unto graces, But its wall speaks loftier truth than Babylo races. Mark our ways, how noiseless All, and sweetly voiceless, nian vaunting. Sagest yet the uses Mixed with our sweet juices, Though the March-winds pipe to make our Whether man or May-fly profit of the balm; Tears of Phoebus-missings Of Cytherea's kissings, Drooping grace unfurls Still Hyacinthus' curls, 45 And Narcissus loves himself in the selfish rill; Thy red lip, Adonis, Still is wet with morning; And the step that bled for thee the rosy brier adorning. Oh! true things are fables, And the flowers are true things yet no fables they; Fables were not more Bright, nor loved of yore Yet they grew not, like the flo ers, by every old pathway; Grossest hand can test us Fools may prize us never Yet we rise, and rise, and rise—marvels sweet for ever. Who shall say that flowers Dress not heaven's own bowers? Who its love, without us, can fancy-or sweel floor? Who shall even dare To say we sprang not there And came not down, that Love might bring Brought us in their white laps down, 'twixt their golden pinions. FLOWERS. LEIGH HUNT. SPAKE full well, in language quaint and olden, One who dwelleth by the castled Rhine, When he called the flowers, so blue and golden, Stars, that in earth's firmament do shine. Stars they are, wherein we read our history. As astrologers and seers of eld; Have in us been found, and wise men find Yet not wrapped about with awful mystery, them still; Like the burning stars which they beheld Wondrous truths, and manifold as wondrous, In the cottage of the rudest peasant; God hath written in those stars above; But not less in the bright flowerets under us Stands the revelation of his love. Bright and glorious is that revelation, In these stars of earth, these golden flow ers. And the poet, faithful and far-seeing, Sees, alike in stars and flowers, a part Of the self-same, universal being In ancestral homes, whose crumbling tow ers, Speaking of the Past unto the Present, Tell us of the ancient Games of Flowers. In all places, then, and in all seasons, Flowers expand their light and soul-like Teaching us, by most persuasive reasons, And with childlike, credulous affection, Which is throbbing in his brain and heart. Emblems of our own great resurrection, Gorgeous flowerets in the sunlight shining, Blossoms flaunting in the eye of day, Tremulous leaves, with soft and silver lining, Buds that open only to decay; Brilliant hopes, all woven in gorgeous tissues, Emblems of the bright and better land. HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW HYMN TO THE FLOWERS. DAY-STARS! that ope your eyes with morn to twinkle From rainbow galaxies of earth's creation, These in flowers and men are more than And dew-drops on her lonely altars sprinkle seeming; Workings are they of the self-same powers Which the poet, in no idle dreaming, Seeth in himself and in the flowers, Everywhere about us are they glowing- Not alone in Spring's armorial bearing, And in Summer's green-emblazoned field, But in arms of brave old Autumn's wearing, In the centre of his brazen shield; Not alone in meadows and green alleys, On the mountain-top, and by the brink Not alone in her vast dome of glory, Not on graves of bird and beast alone, But in old cathedrals, high and hoary, On the tombs of heroes, carved in stone; As a libation! Ye matin worshippers! who bending lowly Ye bright mosaics! that with storied beauty 'Neath cloistered boughs, each floral bell that swingeth And tolls its perfume on the passing air, Makes sabbath in the fields, and ever ringeth A call to prayer. Not to the domes where crumbling arch and Attest the feebleness of mortal hand, NATURE AND THE POETS. 47 To that cathedral, boundless as our wonder, Whose quenchless lamps the sun and moon supply Posthumous glories! angel-like collection! Upraised from seed or bulb interred in earth, Its choir the winds and waves, its organ Ye are to me a type of resurrection, Your voiceless lips, O Flowers, are living preachers, Each cup a pulpit, and each leaf a book, Supplying to my fancy numerous teachers From loneliest nook. Floral apostles! that in dewy splendor O may I deeply learn, and ne'er surrender, Thou wert not, Solomon! in all thy glory, How vain your grandeur! Ah, how transitory And second birth. Were I, O God, in churchless lands remain ing, Far from all voice of teachers or divines, My soul would find, in flowers of thy ordaining, Priests, sermons, shrines! HORACE SMITH. NATURE AND THE POETS. I STOOD tiptoe upon a little hill, Pull droopingly, in slanting curve aside, And fresh from the clear brook; sweetly On the blue fields of heaven, and then there crept In the sweet-scented pictures, Heavenly Art- A little noiseless noise among the leaves, ist! Born of the very sigh that silence heaves; With which thou paintest Nature's wide- For not the faintest motion could be seen peer about upon variety Not useless are ye, Flowers! though made Far round the horizon's crystal air to skim, for pleasure: And trace the dwindled edgings of its brimBlooming o'er field and wave, by day and To picture out the quaint and curious bendnight, ing From every source your sanction bids me Of a fresh woodland alley never-ending treasure Harmless delight. Ephemeral sages! what instructors hoary For such a world of thought could furnish scope? Each fading calyx a memento mori, Yet fount of hope. Or by the bowery clefts, and leafy shelves, I gazed awhile, and felt as light and free And many pleasures to my vision started; So I straightway began to pluck a posy, A bush of May-flowers with the bees about them; How silent comes the water round that bend! Ah, sure no tasteful nook could be without Why you might read two sonnets, ere they them! And let a lush laburnum oversweep them, And let long grass grow round the roots, to keep them Moist, cool, and green; and shade the violets, That they may bind the moss in leafy nets. A filbert-hedge with wild brier overtwined, And clumps of woodbine, taking the soft wind Upon their summer thrones; there too should be The frequent chequer of a youngling tree, That with a score of light green brethren shoots From the quaint mossiness of aged roots, Round which is heard a spring-head of clear waters, Babbling so wildly of its lovely daughters, The spreading blue-bells: it may haply mourn That such fair clusters should be rudely torn From their fresh beds, and, scattered thoughtlessly By infant hands, left on the path to die. Open afresh your round of starry folds, Ye ardent marigolds! Dry up the moisture from your golden lids, For great Apollo bids That in these days your praises should be sung On many harps, which he has lately strung; Here are sweet peas, on tiptoe for a flightWith wings of gentle flush o'er delicate white, And taper fingers catching at all things, To bind them all about with tiny rings. Linger awhile upon some bending planks That lean against a streamlet's rushy banks, And watch intently Nature's gentle doings: They will be found softer than ring-doves' cooings. |