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In summer weather

Close nestling cheek to cheek,

So modest, and so meek,

Like loving hearts partaking all together;
The shade, the sunshine, in your common lot;
You're all remembered, or you're all forgot.

Flowers! how shrink ye

From man's o'erweening ways!

He, moth-like, seeks the blaze;

Ye dwell retired in secret modesty ;

Falsehood and change in him are still inherent-
In you the child is ever like the parent.

The open sky

Is quick with living lights,
Yet less heart-deep delights

It yields than those the greenwood can supply;
How God can make a small flower of the field
Perform its destined part, and pregnant blessings yield!

In hour of pride,

Not victor's burst of joy

Can match, without alloy,

The raptures that with nature's sons abide;

These joys she gave me in a mood of love,

And the world's bickering strife them never shall remove!

At early morn,

When yet your lips are wet

With kisses given you when the stars are met,

Long ere the hunter's loud awakening-horn

Hath roused the laggard to the work of death,

What joy to suck the honeyed fragrance of your breath!

Serenely fair,

Half-hidden by the grass,

With virgin, bashful face,

Blithe beauty dallying with your cheeks and hair,

Ye

peep Oreluctant from beneath the weeds,

Like goodness blushing to make known her deeds.

Wild flowers!

I love right well

To visit where ye dwell,

On Scotia's hills, or vales, or shady bowers!
Your foreign sisters can small joy impart,

But ye are rooted, grow, and blossom in my heart!

D. CHRISTIE.

THE DAISY.

HERE is a flower, a little flower,

With silver crest and golden eye,
That welcomes every changing hour,
And weathers every sky.

The prouder beauties of the field

In gay but quick succession shine, Race after race their honours yield, They flourish and decline.

But this small flower, to Nature dear,

While moons and stars their courses run, Wreathes the whole circle of the year, Companion of the sun.

It smiles upon the lap of May,

To sultry August spreads its charms,
Lights pale October on his way,
And twines December's arm.

The purple heath and golden broom,
On moory mountains catch the gale.
O'er lawns the lily sheds perfume,
The violet in the vale:

But this bold floweret climbs the hill,
Hides in the forests, haunts the glen,
Plays on the margin of the rill,
Peeps round the fox's den.

Within the garden's cultured round
It shares the sweet carnation's bed
And blooms on consecrated ground
In honour of the dead.

The lambkin crops its crimson gem,

The wild bee murmurs on its breast, The blue fly bends its pensile stem Light o'er the skylark's nest.

'Tis Flora's page:-in every place,
In every season fresh and fair,
It opens with perennial grace,
And blossoms every where.

On waste and woodland, rock and plain,
Its humble buds unheeded rise;

The Rose has but a summer reign,

The Daisy never dies.

MONTGOMERY.

THE DAISY.

N youth, from rock to rock I went,
From hill to hill, in discontent,
Of pleasure high and turbulent.
Most pleased when most uneasy;
But now my own delights I make,-
My thirst at every rill can slake,
And gladly Nature's love partake
Of thee, sweet Daisy!

When soothed a while by milder airs,
Thee Winter in the garland wears
That thinly shades his few grey hairs;
Spring cannot shun thee;

Whole Summer fields are thine by right;
And Autumn, melancholy wight,
Doth in thy crimson head delight
When rains are on thee.

Be violets in their secret mews,
The flowers the wanton zephyrs choose:
Proud be the rose, with rains and dews
Her head impearling;

Thou livest with less ambitious aim,
Yet hast not gone without thy fame;
Thou art indeed by many a claim
The poet's darling.

If to a rock from rains he fly,
Or, some bright day of April sky,
Imprisoned by hot sunshine lie
Near the green holly,

And wearily at length should fare;
He needs but look about, and there
Thou art!—a friend at hand, to scare
His melancholy.

A hundred times, by rock or bower,
Ere thus I have lain couched an hour,
Have I derived from thy sweet power

Some apprehension;

Some steady love, some brief delight;
Some memory that had taken flight;
Some chime of fancy wrong or right;
Or stray invention.

If stately passions in me burn,

And one chance look to thee should turn,

I drink out of an humbler urn
A lowlier pleasure;

The homely sympathy that heeds
The common life, our nature breeds;
A wisdom fitted to the needs

Of hearts at leisure.

When smitten by the morning ray,
I see thee rise alert and gay,
Then, cheerful flower! my spirits play
With kindred gladness:

And when, at dusk, by dews oppressed
Thou sink'st, the image of thy rest
Hath often eased my pensive breast
Of careful sadness.

Child of the year! that round dost run
Thy course, bold lover of the sun,
And cheerful, when the day's begun,
As morning leveret,

Thy long-lost praise* thou shalt regain ;
Dear shalt thou be to future men

As in old time;-thou not in vain,

Art Nature's favourite.

WORDSWORTH.

THE WREATH.

SOUGHT the garden's gay parterre
To cull a wreath for Mary's hair,

And thought I surely here might find

Some emblem of her lovely mind,

Where taste displays the varied bloom
Of Flora's beauteous drawing-room.

* See, in Chaucer, and the elder poets, the honours formerly paid to this flower.

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