With crosslets, bends its pearly whiteness round, And how thy spreading lips are trimly bound With such a mellow shade,
As in the vaulted blue,
Deepens at starry midnight, or grows pale,
When mantled in the full-moon's slender veil,
That calm ethereal hue.
I love thee, modest flower!
And I do find it happiness to tread,
With careful steps, along thy studded bed,
At morning's freshest hour;
Or, when the day declines,
And evening comes with dewy footsteps on,
And now his golden hall of slumber won,
The setting sun resigns
And the cool breeze awakes her fluttering train; I walk through thy parterres, and not in vain, For to my downward eye,
Sweet flower! thou tellest how hearts As pure and tender as thy leaf, as low And humble as thy stem, will surely know The joy that peace imparts
TO A WHITE CHRYSANTHEMUM.
Fair gift of Friendship! and her ever bright
And faultless image! welcome now thou art,
In thy pure loveliness, thy robes of white,
Speaking a moral to the feeling heart;
Unscathed by heats-by wintry blasts unmoved,-
Thy strength thus tested—and thy charm improved.
Emblem of innocence, which fearless braves
Life's dreariest scenes, its rudest storm derides,
And floats as calmly on o'er troubled waves,
As where the peaceful streamlet smoothly glides;
Thou 'rt blooming now, as beautiful and clear
As other blossoms do when Spring is here.
Symbol of hope, still banishing the gloom
Hung o'er the mind by stern December's reign! Thou cheer'st the fancy by the steady bloom, With thoughts of Summer and the fertile plain, Calling a thousand visions into play,
Of beauty redolent, and bright as May.
Type of a true and holy love; the same
Through every scene that clouds life's varied page; Mid grief-mid gladness-spell of every dream, Tender in youth-and strong in feeble age!
The peerless picture of a modest wife,
Thou bloom'st the fairest mid the frost of life.
A FLOWER FROM MOUNT VERNON.
Bright blossom! thou hast breathed the air
Around our hero's tomb-
What do the night-winds murmur there,
When skies are wrapped in gloom?
A dirge above the sleeping one,
Of giant heart and arm?
Above a race of glory run,
Whose memory has a charm
To thrill young hearts, and lift them up
To thirst for glory's gilded cup?
Sheds not the moon, in radiance there,
A brighter, holier light?
Look not the stars with smiles more fair,
From off the brow of night?
Send not the dews, which bathe that steep,
A fragrant incense round,
As they were sacred tears, to weep
O'er fame that death has crowned?
Didst thou not bow thy head, bright gem
Of Nature's peerless diadem,
O'er him who sleeps in glory there,
Beneath a nation's grateful prayer?
Meek dwellers mid yon terror-stricken cliffs!
With brows so pure, and incense-breathing lips,
Whence are ye? Did some white-winged messenger,
On Mercy's missions, trust your
To the cold cradle of eternal snows,
Or, breathing on the callous icicles,
Bid them with tear-drops nurse ye?
Tree nor shrub
Dare that drear atmosphere; no polar pine
Uprears a veteran front; yet there ye stand,
Leaning your cheeks against the thick-ribbed ice,
And looking up with brilliant eyes to Him
Who bids you bloom unblanched, amid the waste
Of desolation. Man, who, panting, toils
O'er slippery steeps, or, trembling, treads the verge
Of yawning gulfs, o'er which the headlong plunge
Into eternity, looks shuddering up,
And marks ye in your placid loveliness—
Fearless, yet frail—and, clasping his chill hands,
Blesses your pencilled beauty. Mid the pomp
Of mountain summits rushing to the sky,
And chaining the rapt soul in breathless awe,
He bows to bind you drooping to his breast,
Inhales your spirit from the frost-winged gale,
And freer dreams of heaven.
A Tulip blossomed one morning in May,
By the side of a sanded alley;
Its leaves were dressed in rich array,
Like the clouds at the earliest dawn of day,
When the mist rolls over the valley.
The dew had descended the night before,
And lay in its velvet bosom,
And its spreading urn was flowing o'er,
And the crystal heightened the tints it bore
On its yellow and crimson blossom.
A sweet red Rose, on its bending thorn,
Its bud was newly spreading,
And the flowing effulgence of early morn
Its beams on its breast was shedding;
The petals were heavy with dripping tears,
That twinkled in pearly brightness,
And the thrush in its covert filled my ears
With a varied song of lightness.
A Lily, in mantle of purest snow,
Hung over a silent fountain,
And the wave, in its calm and quiet flow,
Displayed its silken leaves below,
Like the drift on the windy mountain:
It bowed with the moisture the night had wept
When the stars shone over the billow,
And white-winged spirits their vigils kept,
Where beauty and innocence sweetly slept
On its pure and thornless pillow.
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