SONG OF THE FLOWERS. WE are the sweet Flowers, Think, whene'er you see us, what our beauty saith: 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; 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; Unto sick and prison'd thoughts we give sudden 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; 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! 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, Every one a marvel, more than thought can say ; And with what heaps of sweetness half stifle wan- By the bee-birds haunted, [ton May: 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 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; 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, And the flowers are true things, yet no fables they; 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, Oh sweet and tiny cousins, that belong, ON A LOCK OF MILTON'S HAIR. Ir lies before me there, and my own breath |