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.

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;

The Bramble Flower

1419

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!

Harriet McEwen Kimball [1834

THE BRAMBLE FLOWER

THY fruit full well the schoolboy knows,
Wild bramble of the brake!

So, put thou forth thy small white rose;
I love it for his sake.

Though woodbines flaunt and roses glow
O'er all the fragrant bowers,

Thou need'st not be ashamed to show
Thy satin-threaded flowers;

For dull the eye, the heart is dull,
That cannot feel how fair,

Amid all beauty beautiful,

Thy tender blossoms are,

How delicate thy gauzy frill,

How rich thy branchy stem,

How soft thy voice when woods are still,
And thou sing'st hymns to them;

While silent showers are falling slow,
And, 'mid the general hush,
A sweet air lifts the little bough,

Lone whispering through the bush!
The primrose to the grave is gone;
The hawthorn flower is dead;
The violet by the mossed gray stone
Hath laid her weary head;

But thou, wild bramble, back dost bring,
In all their beauteous power,

The fresh green days of life's fair Spring,
And boyhood's blossomy hour.

Scorned bramble of the brake, once more
Thou bidd'st me be a boy,

To gad with thee the woodlands o'er,

In freedom and in joy.

Ebenezer Elliott [1781-1849]

THE BRIER

My brier that smelledst sweet,
When gentle Spring's first heat

Ran through thy quiet veins;
Thou that couldst injure none,
But wouldst be left alone,

Alone thou leavest me, and naught of thine remains.

What! hath no poet's lyre

O'er thee, sweet-breathing brier,

Hung fondly, ill or well?

And yet, methinks, with thee

A poet's sympathy,

Whether in weal or woe, in life or death, might dwell.

Hard usage both must bear,
Few hands your youth will rear,

Few bosoms cherish you;

Your tender prime must bleed

Ere you are sweet; but, freed

From life, you then are prized; thus prized are poets too.

Walter Savage Landor [1775-1864]

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

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,
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
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.

1421

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!

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