Page images
PDF
EPUB

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,
Eve smiled upon the beauteous birth,
That seemed, amid the general dearth
Of living things, a greater prize
Than all her flowers in Paradise.

"This is an earnest, Eve, to thee,"
The glorious angel said

"That sun and summer soon shall be ;
And though the leaves seem dead,
Yet once again the smiling spring,
With wooing winds shall swiftly bring
New life to every sleeping thing;
Until they wake and make the scene
Look fresh again and gaily green."

The angel's mission being ended,
Up to heaven he flew,
But where he first descended,

And where he bade the earth adieu,
A ring of snowdrops formed a posy
Of pallid flowers, whose leaves, unrosy,
Waved like a winged argosy,—
Whose climbing masts, above the sea,

Spread fluttering sail and streamer free.

149

And thus the snowdrop, like the bow
That spans the cloudy sky,
Becomes a symbol whence we know
That brighter days are nigh;
That circling seasons, in a race
That knows no lagging lingering pace,
Shall each the other nimbly chase
Till Time's departing final day

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,
Shall smile and pluck them; when this simple rhyme
Shall be forgotten, like a church-yard stone,

Or lingering lie, unnoticed and alone,

When eighteen hundred years, our common date,
Grow many thousands in their marching state,
Ay, still the child, with pleasure in his eye,
Shall cry, the daisy!-a familiar cry-
And run to pluck it, in the self-same state;
And, like a child himself, when all was new,
Might smile with wonder, and take notice too;

The Daisy.

Its little golden bosom filled with snow,

Might win e'en Eve to stoop adown and show
Her partner, Adam, in the silken grass,

The little gem, that smiled where pleasure was,

And, loving Eve, from Eden followed ill

151

And bloomed with sorrow,-and lives smiling still,
As once in Eden, under Heaven's breath,

So now on Earth, and on the lap of death,
It smiles for ever.

CLARE.

THE FLOWER DIAL.

WAS a lovely thought to mark the hours,
As they floated in light away,

By the opening and the folding flowers,
That laugh to the summer's day.

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-
Those days of song and dreams,—
When shepherds gathered their flocks of old,
By the blue Arcadian streams.

So in those isles of delight, that rest
Far off in a breezeless main,
Which many a bark, with a weary guest,
Has sought, but still in vain.

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,
Shutting in turn, may leave

A lingering still for the sunset hour,

A charm for the shaded eve.

J

THE END.

HEMANS.

« PreviousContinue »