Origin of the Snowdrop. And catching, as he gently spake, A flake of falling snow, He breathed on it, and bade it take A form, and bud and blow; And, ere the flake had reached the earth, "This is an earnest, Eve, to thee," "That sun and summer soon shall be ; The angel's mission being ended, And where he bade the earth adieu, Spread fluttering sail and streamer free. 149 And thus the snowdrop, like the bow Sweep snowdrops and the world away! G. W. THE DAISY. TRAMPLED under foot, The daisy lives, and strikes its little root Into the lap of Time; centuries may come And pass away into the silent tomb, And still the child, hid in the womb of Time, Or lingering lie, unnoticed and alone, When eighteen hundred years, our common date, The Daisy. Its little golden bosom filled with snow, Might win e'en Eve to stoop adown and show The little gem, that smiled where pleasure was, And, loving Eve, from Eden followed ill 151 And bloomed with sorrow,-and lives smiling still, So now on Earth, and on the lap of death, CLARE. THE FLOWER DIAL. WAS a lovely thought to mark the hours, By the opening and the folding flowers, Thus had each moment its own rich hue, And its graceful cup and bell, In whose coloured vase might sleep the dew, Like a pearl in an ocean shell. To such sweet signs might the time have flowed In a golden current on, Ere from the garden, man's first abode, The glorious guests were gone. So might the days have been brightly told- So in those isles of delight, that rest Yet is not life, in its real flight, Marked thus-even thus-on earth By the closing of one hope's delight, And another's gentle birth? Oh! let us live so that flower by flower, A lingering still for the sunset hour, A charm for the shaded eve. J THE END. HEMANS. |