Hold one of us lightly,- Stalk we bow'r in heavy blooms, Know you not our only Rival flow'r,-the human? Loveliest weight on lightest foot, Joy-abundant woman? LILIES. WE are lilies fair, The flower of virgin light; Nature held us forth, and said, "Lo! my thoughts of white." Ever since then, angels Hold us in their hands; You may see them where they take Like the garden's angels Also do we seem ; And not the less for being crown'd With a golden dream. Could you see around us The enamour'd air, You would see it pale with bliss POPPIES. We are slumberous poppies, Sleeping in our crowns. What perchance our dreams may know, Let our serious beauty show. Central depth of purple, Leaves more bright than rose, Who shall tell what brightest thought Out of darkest grows? Who, through what funereal pain, Visions aye are on us, And Proserpine's bower : There, like bees, the pale souls come Taste, ye mortals, also; Milky-hearted, we;— Taste, but with a reverent care; Too much gladness brings to gloom CHORUS. WE are the sweet flowers, Born of sunny showers, (Think, whene'er you see us, what our beauty saith ;) Utterance, mute and bright, Of some unknown delight, We fill the air with pleasure, by our simple breath: We befit all places : Unto sorrow we give smiles, and unto graces, graces. Mark our ways, how noiseless All, and sweetly voiceless, Though the March-winds pipe, to make our passage clear; Not a whisper tells Where our small seed dwells, Nor is known the moment green, when our tips appear. In silence build our bowers, And leaf by leaf in silence show, till we laugh a-top, sweet flowers. The dear lumpish baby, Humming with the May-bee, Hails us with his bright stare, stumbling through the grass; The honey-dropping moon, On a night in June, Kisses our pale pathway leaves, that felt the bridegroom pass. Age, the wither'd clinger, And wraps On us mutely gazes, the thought of his last bed in his childhood's daisies. See (and scorn all duller How great Nature, clearly, joys in red and green ;- And a thousand flushing hues, made solely to be seen: Chill the silver showers, And what a red mouth is her rose, the woman of the flowers. Uselessness divinest, Of a use the finest, Painteth us, the teachers of the end of use; Unto sick and prison'd thoughts we give sudden truce: Loves its sickliest planting, But its wall speaks loftier truth than Babylonian vaunting. Sagest yet the uses, Mix'd with our sweet juices, Whether man, or May-fly, profit of the balm; Knights from the olden field, We hold cups of mightiest force to give the wildest calm. Hath its plea for blooming; Life it gives to reverent lips, though death to the presuming. And oh! our sweet soul-taker, That thief, the honey maker, What a house hath he, by the thymy glen! Till the gold cups overflow to the mouths of men! Those fine thieves of ours, And flutter round our rifled tops, like tickled flowers with flowers. See those tops, how beauteous! What fair service duteous Elfin court 'twould seem; And taught, perchance, that dream Which the old Greek mountain dreamt, upon nights divine. To expound such wonder Human speech avails not; Yet there dies no poorest weed, that such a glory exhales not. Think of all these treasures, Every one a marvel, more than thought can say ; We thicken fields and bow'rs, And with what heaps of sweetness half stifle wanton May: Think of the mossy forests By the bee-birds haunted, And all those Amazonian plains, lone lying as enchanted. Trees themselves are ours; Peach, and roughest nut, were blossoms in the spring: The news, and comes pell-mell, And dances in the bloomy thicks with darksome antheming. Beneath the very burthen Of planet-pressing ocean, —a thought for meek We wash our smiling cheeks in peace, devotion. Tears of Phoebus,-missings Have in us been found, and wise men find them still; Still Hyacinthus' curls, And Narcissus loves himself in the selfish rill: Still is wet with morning; And the step, that bled for thee, the rosy briar adorning. Oh! true things are fables, Fit for sagest tables, And the flow'rs are true things,—yet no fables they; Bright, nor loved of yore, Yet they grew not, like the flow'rs, 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, Who shall even dare or sweet floor? To say, we sprang not there,— And came not down that Love might bring one piece of heav'n the more? Oh! pray believe that angels From those blue dominions, Brought us in their white laps down, 'twixt their golden pinions. TO A CHILD, DURING SICKNESS. SLEEP breathes at last from out thee, My little, patient boy; And balmy rest about thee Smooths off the day's annoy. I sit me down, and think Of all thy winning ways; Yet almost wish, with sudden shrink, Thy sidelong pillow'd meekness, The little trembling hand That wipes thy quiet tears,- Dread memories for years. may Sorrows I've had, severe ones I will not think of now; demand |