THE WILD HONEYSUCKLE.

Fair flower, that dost so comely grow,
Hid in this silent, dull retreat,
Untouch'd thy honeyed blossoms blow,
Unseen thy little branches greet:

No roving foot shall crush thee here,
No busy hand provoke a tear.

By Nature's self in white array'd,
She bade thee shun the vulgar eye,
And planted here the guardian shade,
And sent soft waters murmuring by ;
Thus quietly thy summer goes,
Thy days declining to repose.

Smit with those charms that must decay,
I grieve to see your future doom;
They died-nor were those flowers more gay
The flowers that did in Eden bloom;

Unpitying frosts and Autumn's power
Shall leave no vestige of this flower.

From morning suns and evening dews
At first thy little being came :
If nothing once, you nothing lose,

or when you die you are the same;
The space between is but an hour-
The frail duration of a flower.

PHILIP FRENEAU, 1752-1882.

WILD FLOWERS.

I dreamed that, as I wander'd by the way,
Bare winter suddenly was changed to spring,
And gentle odors led my steps astray,

Mix'd with a sound of waters murmuring
Along a shelving bank of turf, which lay

Under a copse, and hardly dared to fling

Its green arms round the bosom of the stream,

But kiss'd it and then fled, as thou mightest in a dream.

There grew pied wind-flowers and violets,
Daisies, those pearl'd Arcturi of the earth,
The constellated flower that never sets;

Faint oxlips; tender blue-bells, at whose birth

The sod scarce heaved; and that tall flower that wets
Its mother's face with heaven-collected tears,
When the low wind, its playmate's voice, it hears.

And in the warm hedge grew lush eglantine,

Green cowbind and the moonlight-color'd May,
And cherry blossoms, and white cups, whose wine
Was the bright dew yet drain'd not by the day;
And wild roses, and ivy serpentine,

With its dark buds and leaves, wandering astray,
And flowers azure, black, and streak'd with gold;
Fairer than any waken'd eyes behold.

And nearer to the river's trembling edge

There grew broad flag-flowers, purple prankt with white, And starry river buds among the sedge,

And floating water-lilies, broad and bright,

Which lit the oak that overhung the hedge

With moonlight beams of their own watery light;

And bulrushes and reeds of such deep green

As soothed the dazzled eye with sober sheen.

Methought that of these visionary flowers

I made a nosegay, bound in such a way
That the same hues which in their natural bowers
Were mingled or opposed, the like array
Kept these imprison'd children of the hours
Within my hand-and then, elate and gay,

I hasten'd to the spot whence I had come,
That I might there present it !-oh, to whom?

P. B. SHELLEY.

BEAU AND THE LILY.

"I must tell you a feat of my dog Beau. Walking by the river side, I observed some water-lilies floating at a little distance from the bank. They are a large white flower, with an orange-colored eye, very beautiful I had a desire to gather one, and, having your long cane in my hand, by the help of it endeavored to bring one of them within my reach. But the attempt proved vain, and I walked forward. Beau had all the while observed me very attentively. Returning soon after toward the same place, I observed him plunge into the river, while I was

about forty yards distant from him; and, when I had nearly reached the spot, he swam to land, with a lily in his mouth, which he came and laid at my feet."

W. CowPER to Lady Hesketh, June 27th, 1788.

FLOWERS.

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 :
All who see us love us-

We befit all places:

Unto sorrow we give smiles-and unto graces, races

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 a-top, sweet flowers.

The dear lumpish baby,

Humming with the May-bee,

Hails us with his bright star, 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 is her rose, the woman of her flowers.

Uselessness divinest,

Of a use the finest,

Painteth us,

the teachers of the end of use;

Travelers, weary eyed,

Bless us, far and wide;

Unto sick and prison'd thoughts we give sudden truce:
Not a poor town window

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,
That thief, the honey maker,

What a house hath he, by the thymy glen!

In his talking rooms

How the feasting fumes,

Till the gold cups overflow to the mouths of men!

The butterflies 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

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 showers

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 gloomy thicks with darksome antheming,

Beneath the very burden

Of planet-pressing ocean,

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

Tears of Phoebus-missings

Of Cytherea's kissings,

Have in us been found, and wise men find them still;

Drooping grace unfurls

Still Hyacinthus' curls,

And Narcissus loves himself in the selfish rill:

Thy red lip, Adonis,

Still is wet with morning;

And the step, that bled for thee, the rosy brier adorning.

O true things are fables,

Fit for sagest tables,

And the flowers are true things-yet no fables they;

Fables were not more

Bright, nor loved of yore

Yet they grew not, like the flowers, 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?

Who shall even dare

To say, we sprang not there

And came not down that Love might bring one piece of heaven the

more?

O pray believe that angels

From those blue dominions,

Brought us in their white laps down, 'twixt their golden pinions.

LEIGH HUNT.