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AUTUMN FLOWERS.

Pale Flowers!-pale, perishing Flowers!

Ye're types of precious things,

Types of those bitter moments

That flit, like life's enjoyments,
On rapid, rapid wings.

Last hours with parting dear ones
(That time the fastest spends),
Last tears, in silence shed,
Last words, half uttered,

Last looks of dying friends!

223

Song of the Flowers.

E are the sweet Flowers,

Born of sunny showers,

Leigh Hunt.

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 clear;

Not a whisper tells

Where our small seed dwells,

Nor is known the moment green, when our tips appear.

We thread the earth in silence,

In silence build our bowers,

And leaf by leaf in silence show, till we laugh atop

Flowers.

Paint

sweet

Cato

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SONG OF THE FLOWERS.

225

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 color,

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,

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

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;

226

LEIGH HUNT.

Not a poor town window

Loves its sickliest planting,

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 calm. E'en 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,

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 butterflys 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

SONG OF THE FLOWERS.

227

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 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,
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 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;

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 blooming thicks with darksome antheming. Beneath the very burthen

Of planet-pressing ocean,

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

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