AUTUMN FLOWERS. Pale Flowers!-pale, perishing Flowers! Ye're types of precious things, Types of those bitter moments That flit, like life's enjoyments, Last hours with parting dear ones 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: 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 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 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; 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? 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; 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 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. |