BLOOD-ROOT. 



SANGUINARIA CANADENSIS L. 



How fresh, O Lord, how sweet and clean 



Are thy returns! even as the flowers in Spring; 

 To which, besides their own demean, 



The late-past frosts tributes of pleasure bring. 

 Grief melts away 

 Like snow in May, 

 As if there were no such cold thing. 



Who would have thought my shrivelled heart 



Could have recovered greenness? It was gone 

 Quite under ground; as flowers depart 



To see their mother-root, when they have blown; 

 Where they together, 

 All the hard weather, 

 Dead to the world, keep house unknown. 



And now in age, I bud again, 



After so many deaths I live and write; 

 I once more smell the dew and rain, 

 And relish versing: O my only light, 

 It cannot be 

 That I am he 

 On whom thy tempests fell all night. 



Herbert. 



[ii] 



