Pluto's alway-setting sun, 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 Though the March-winds pipe, to make our passage clear; 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, On us mutely gazes, And wraps the thought of his last bed in his childhood's daisies. See (and scorn all duller Taste) how heav'n loves colour; How great Nature, clearly, joys in red and green;— Of violets and pinks, 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 her flowers. 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 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; As fair fingers heal'd Knights from the olden field, We hold cups of mightiest force to give the wildest calm. Ev'n the terror, poison, Hath its plea for blooming; Life it gives to reverent lips, though death to the presuming. And oh! our sweet soul-taker, What a house hath he, by the thymy glen! How the feasting fumes, 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 Round some idol waits, as on their lord the Nine? 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; Then think in what bright show'rs 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 gloomy 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 Phœbus,—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, 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-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, Thy thanks to all that aid, The little trembling hand That wipes thy quiet tears, These, these are things that may demand |