The Mountaus Heartirace By scattered pocks and turbid waters shifting sweet To prouish men they calme, Sivach face uplifting The delicats thought, that cannot find expression "That, like thy petals, heartles in possess in And scattus The But Harty ARBUTUS. F Spring has maids of honorAnd why should not the Spring, With all her dainty service, Have thought of some such thing? If Spring has maids of honor, The Spring would seek in vain. For sweet and subtle fragrance, Of vines and vine's delight, For joy and love of lovers, For joy of young and old, No blossom like arbutus In all that Springtimes hold. The noble maids of honor, By weary night and day, Among their royal duties, Bouquets of blossoms bring Each evening to the banquet, And hand them to the king. If Spring has maids of honor, HELEN JACKSON. SONGS OF THE FLOWERS. WE E are the sweet Flowers, Born of sunny showers; 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, sweet flowers. The dear lumpish baby, Humming with the May-bee, Hails us with his bright stare, tumbling The honey-dropping moon, Kisses our pale pathway leaves, that felt the Age, the withered clinger, And wraps the thought of his last bed in his See, and scorn all duller Taste, how heaven loves color, How great Nature clearly joys in red and green; What sweet thoughts she thinks Of violets and pinks, And a thousand flashing hues, made solely to be seen; See her whitest lilies Chill the silver showers, And what a red mouth has the rose, the woman of the flowers! Uselessness divinest Of a use the finest Painteth us, the teachers of the end of use; Bless us far and wide; Think, whene'er you see us, what our beauty Unto sick and prisoned thoughts we give sud saith; Utterance mute and bright Of some unknown delight, den truce; Not a poor town window We fill the air with pleasure by our simple But its wall speaks loftier truth than Baby But none ever trembled and panted with bliss In the garden, the field, or the wilderness, Like a doe in the noontide with love's sweet want, As the companionless Sensitive Plant. The snow-drop, and then the violet, And around them the soft stream did glide and glance With a motion of sweet sound and radiance. And the sinuous paths of lawn and moss, Which led through the garden and across, Some open at once to the sun and the breeze, Some lost among bowers of blossoming trees, Were all paved with daisies and delicate bells, From the turf, like the voice and the instru- As fair as the fabulous asphodels, ment. Then the pied wind-flowers and the tulip tall, And the naiad-like lily of the vale, And flowers which, drooping as day drooped too, Fell into pavilions, white, purple, and blue, To roof the glow-worm from the evening dew. And from this undefiled Paradise, The flowers, as an infant's awakening eyes, Smile on its mother, whose singing sweet Whom youth makes so fair and passion so Can first lull, and at last must awaken it, pale, And the jessamine faint, and the sweet tube- For the Sensitive Plant has no bright flower, rose, The sweetest flower for scent that blows; With gold and green light slanting through Broad water-lilies lay tremulously, And starry river-buds glided by, Radiance and odor are not its dower; It loves, even like Love, its deep heart full, It desires what it has not, the Beautiful: The light winds which from unsustaining wings Shed the music of many murmurings, The plumed insects swift and free, Like golden boats on the sunny sea, Laden with light and odor, which pass The unseen clouds of the dew, which lie Each and all like ministering angels were And when evening descended from heaven above, IN THE WOODS. (From "The Complaint of the Black Knight.") ROSE anone, and thought I woulde gone Whan that the misty vapour was agone, Into the woode, to heare the birdes sing, And clear and fair was the morning, The dewe also like silver in shining Upon the leaves, as any baume swete, And the earth was all rest, and the air was all Till fiery Titan with his persant heat love, And delight, though less bright, was far more deep, And the day's veil fell from the world of sleep, And the beasts, and the birds, and the insects were drowned In an ocean of dreams without a sound, Whose waves never mark, though they ever impress The light sand which paves it, consciousness; Only overhead, the sweet nightingale Were mixed with the dreams of the Sensitive PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. LILIES OF THE FIELD. WEET nurslings of the vernal skies, Bathed with soft airs, and fed with dew, What more than magic in you lies, To fill the heart's fond view? As when ye crowned the sunshine hours Fallen all beside! the world of life, Had dried up the lusty licour new Upon the herbes in the grene mede, And that the floures of many divers hue, Upon hir stalks gon for to sprede, And for to splay out hir leves in brede Againe the sunne, gold burned in his sphere, That doune to hem cast his beames clere. GEOFFREY CHAUCER. SONG OF THE ROSE. (Attributed to Sappho.) Zeus chose us a king of the flowers in his mirth, He would call to the rose, and would royalally crown it; For the rose, ho! the rose is the grace of the earth, Is the light of the plants that are growing upon it! For the rose, ho! the rose is the eye of the flowers, Is the blush of the meadows that feel themselves fair, Is the lightning of beauty that strikes through the bowers On pale lovers that sit in the glow unaware. Ho, the rose breathes of love! ho, the rose lifts the cup To the red lips of Cyprus invoked for a guest! Ho, the rose having curled Its sweet leaves for the world, Takes delight in the motion its petals keep up, As they laugh to the Wind as it laughs from the west. ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING'S TRANSLATION. |