SONG OF THE FLOWERS.

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: All who see us, love us;

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 Not a whisper tells

Where our small seed dwells,

[clear;

Nor is known the moment green, when our tips We thread the earth in silence,

In silence build our bowers,

[appear.

And leaf by leaf in silence shew, till we laugh atop, sweet Flowers !

The dear lumpish baby,

Humming with the May-bee,

Hails us with his bright stare, stumbling through The honey-dropping moon,

On a night in June,

[the grass;

Kisses our pale pathway leaves, that felt the bride

Age, the wither'd clinger,

On us mutely gazes,

[groom pass.

And wraps the thought of his last bed in his child

hood's daisies.

See, and scorn all duller

Taste, how heav'n loves colour,

How great Nature, clearly, joys in red and green;
What sweet thoughts she thinks
Of violets and pinks,

And a thousand flushing hues, made solely to be seen; See her whitest lilies

Chill the silver showers,

[the flowers!

And what a red mouth has her rose, the woman of

Uselessness divinest

Of a use the finest

Painteth us, the teachers of the end of use;
Travellers weary-eyed
Bless us far and wide;

Unto sick and prison'd thoughts we give sudden
Not a poor town window

Loves its sickliest planting,

[truce;

But its wall speaks loftier truth than Babylon's whole vaunting.

Sage are yet the uses

Mix'd with our sweet juices,

Whether man or may-fly profit of the balm;
As fair fingers heal'd

Knights from the olden field,

We hold cups of mightiest force to give the wildest E'en the terror Poison

Hath its plea for blooming;

[calm.

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!
In his talking rooms

How the feasting fumes,

Till his gold cups overflow to the mouths of men !

The butterflies come aping

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

Round some idol waits, as on their lord the Nine? Elfin court 'twould seem;

And taught perchance that dream,

Which the old Greek mountain dreamt upon nights To expound such wonder

Human speech avails not;

[divine.

Yet there dies no poorest weed, that such a glory exhales not.

Think of all these treasures,
Matchless works and pleasures,

Every one a marvel, more than thought can say ;
Then think in what bright show'rs
We thicken fields and bowers,

And with what heaps of sweetness half stifle wan-
Think of the mossy forests

By the bee-birds haunted,

[ton May:

And all those Amazonian plains, lone lying as enchanted.

Trees themselves are ours;
Fruits are born of flowers;

Peach and roughest nut were blossoms in the spring;
The lusty bee knows well

The news, and comes pell-mell,

And dances in the bloomy thicks with darksome antheming.

Beneath the

very

burthen

Of planet-pressing ocean

We wash our smiling cheeks in peace, a thought for meek devotion.

Tears of Phoebus,-missings

Of Cytherea's kissings,

Have in us been found, and wise men find them still;
Drooping grace unfurls
Still Hyacinthus' curls,

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 briar adorning.

Oh, true things are fables,
Fit for sagest tables,

And the flowers are true things, yet no fables they;
Fables were not more

Bright, nor lov'd of yore,

Yet they grew not, like the flow'rs, by every old Grossest hand can test us;

Fools may prize us never;

[pathway.

Yet we rise, and rise, and rise, marvels sweet for ever.

Who shall say that flowers

Dress not heav'n's own bowers?

Who its love, without them, can fancy,

Who shall even dare

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.

SONNETS.

ΤΟ

THE GRASSHOPPER AND THE CRICKET.

GREEN little vaulter in the sunny grass,
Catching your heart up at the feel of June,
Sole voice that 's heard amidst the lazy noon,
When even the bees lag at the summoning brass
And you, warm little housekeeper, who class
With those who think the candles come too soon,
Loving the fire, and with your tricksome tune
Nick the glad silent moments as they pass;

Oh sweet and tiny cousins, that belong,
One to the fields, the other to the hearth, [strong
Both have your sunshine; both, though small, are
At your clear hearts; and both seem given to earth
To ring in thoughtful ears this natural song-
In doors and out, summer and winter, Mirth.

ON A LOCK OF MILTON'S HAIR.

Ir lies before me there, and my own breath
Stirs its thin outer threads, as though beside
The living head I stood in honour'd pride,
Talking of lovely things that conquer death.