Jasmine is sweet, and has many loves,
And the broom's betrothed to the bee;-
But I will plight with the dainty rose,

For fairest of all is she.

Thomas Hood (1799-1845]

A CONTEMPLATION UPON FLOWERS
BRAVE flowers-that I could gallant it like you,
And be as little vain!

You come abroad, and make a harmless show,
And to your beds of earth again.

You are not proud: you know your birth:
For your embroidered garments are from earth.

You do obey your months and times, but I
Would have it ever Spring:

My fate would know no Winter, never die,
Nor think of such a thing.

O that I could my bed of earth but view
And smile, and look as cheerfully as you!

O teach me to see Death and not to fear,
But rather to take truce!

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,
April's gift to April's bees,
Birthday ornament of Spring,
Flora's fairest daughterling;
Coming when no flowerets dare
Trust the cruel outer air;
When the royal kingcup bold
Dares not don his coat of gold;

White Azaleas

And the sturdy black-thorn spray
Keeps his silver for the May;-
Coming when no flowerets would,
Save thy lowly sisterhood,
Early violets, blue and white,
Dying for their love of light;-
Almond blossom, sent to teach us
That the spring days soon will reach us,
Lest, with longing over-tried,
We die, as the violets died;-
Blossom, clouding all the tree
With thy crimson broidery,
Long before a leaf of green
On the bravest bough is seen;-
Ah! when winter winds are swinging
All thy red bells into ringing,

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,
Before the coming glow
Tinges the morning light;

When the light is like the snow,

White,

And the silence is like the light:

Light, and silence, and snow,-
All-white!

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
Just underneath the mould,
Such wondrous quaint designers
Who live in caves of gold.

They take the shining metals,
And beat them into shreds;
And mould them into petals,
To make the flowers' heads.

Sometimes they melt the flowers
To tiny seeds like pearls,
And store them up in bowers
For little boys and girls.

And still a tiny fan turns
Above a forge of gold,

To keep, with fairy lanterns,
The world from growing old.
Wilfrid Thorley [1878-

THE BROOM FLOWER

OH the Broom, the yellow Broom,
The ancient poet sung it,
And dear it is on summer days
To lie at rest among it.

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
Like to a garland golden.

And all about my mother's door

Shine out its glittering bushes,

And down the glen, where clear as light T
The mountain-water gushes.

Take all the rest; but give me this,
And the bird that nestles in it;

I love it, for it loves the Broom—
The green and yellow linnet.

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
Beloved of man and woman;
The Broom it is the flower for me,
That groweth on the common.

Oh the Broom, the yellow Broom,
The ancient poet sung it,

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;
And, the first moment that the sun may shine,

Bright as the sun himself, 'tis out again!

When hailstones have been falling, swarm on swarm,
Or blasts the green field and the trees distressed,
Oft have I seen it muffled up from harm,

In close self-shelter, like a thing at rest.

But lately, one rough day, this Flower I passed
And recognized it, though an altered form,
Now standing forth an offering to the blast,
And buffeted at will by rain and storm.

I stopped, and said with inly-muttered voice,
"It doth not love the shower, nor seek the cold:
This neither is its courage, nor its choice,
But its necessity in being old.

"The sunshine may not cheer it, nor the dew;
It cannot help itself in its decay;

Stiff in its members, withered, changed of hue."
And, in my spleen, I smiled that it was gray.

To be a Prodigal's Favorite-then, worse truth,
A Miser's Pensioner-behold our lot!

O Man, that from thy fair and shining youth
Age might but take the things Youth needed not!
William Wordsworth [1770-1850]

TO THE SMALL CELANDINE

PANSIES, lilies, kingcups, daisies,
Let them live upon their praises;
Long as there's a sun that sets,
Primroses will have their glory;
Long as there are violets,
They will have a place in story:

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!