Jasmine is sweet, and has many loves, For fairest of all is she. Thomas Hood (1799-1845] A CONTEMPLATION UPON FLOWERS You come abroad, and make a harmless show, You are not proud: you know your birth: You do obey your months and times, but I My fate would know no Winter, never die, O that I could my bed of earth but view O teach me to see Death and not to fear, How often have I seen you at a bier, And there look fresh and spruce! You fragrant flowers! then teach me, that my breath Like yours may sweeten and perfume my death. Henry King [1592-1669] ALMOND BLOSSOM BLOSSOM of the almond trees, White Azaleas And the sturdy black-thorn spray With a bee in every bell, Almond bloom, we greet thee well. 1467 Edwin Arnold [1832-1904] WHITE AZALEAS AZALEAS-whitest of white! White as the drifted snow Fresh-fallen out of the night, When the light is like the snow, White, And the silence is like the light: Light, and silence, and snow,- White! not a hint Of the creamy tint A rose will hold,' The whitest rose, in its inmost fold; Not a possible blush; White as an embodied hush; A very rapture of white; A wedlock of silence and light: White, white as the wonder undefiled Of Eve just wakened in Paradise; Nay, white as the angel of a child That looks into God's own eyes! Harrict McEwen Kimball (1834 BUTTERCUPS THERE must be fairy miners They take the shining metals, Sometimes they melt the flowers And still a tiny fan turns To keep, with fairy lanterns, THE BROOM FLOWER OH the Broom, the yellow Broom, I know the realms where people say The flowers have not their fellow; I know where they shine out like suns, The crimson and the yellow. The Small Celandine I know where ladies live enchained d In luxury's silken fetters, And flowers as bright as glittering gems Are used for written letters. But ne'er was flower so fair as this, i In modern days or olden; It groweth on its nodding stem And all about my mother's door Shine out its glittering bushes, And down the glen, where clear as light T Take all the rest; but give me this, I love it, for it loves the Broom— Well call the rose the queen of flowers,, And boast of that of Sharon, Of lilies like to marble cups, And the golden rod of Aaron: I care not how these flowers may be Oh the Broom, the yellow Broom, And dear it is on summer days To lie at rest among it. 3/0 Mary Howitt [1799-1888] THE SMALL CELANDINE THERE is a Flower, the lesser Celandine, That shrinks, like many more, from cold and rain; Bright as the sun himself, 'tis out again! When hailstones have been falling, swarm on swarm, In close self-shelter, like a thing at rest. But lately, one rough day, this Flower I passed I stopped, and said with inly-muttered voice, "The sunshine may not cheer it, nor the dew; Stiff in its members, withered, changed of hue." To be a Prodigal's Favorite-then, worse truth, O Man, that from thy fair and shining youth TO THE SMALL CELANDINE PANSIES, lilies, kingcups, daisies, There's a flower that shall be mine, "Tis the little Celandine. Eyes of some men travel far For the finding of a star; Up and down the heavens they go, Men that keep a mighty rout! |