FUNERAL FLOWERS. 



"FLOWERS, wherefore do ye bloom? 

 We strew the pathway to the tomb !" 

 J. MONTGOMERY. 



"Here is the mother with her sons and daughters : 

 The barren wife, the long demurring maid, 

 Whose lonely unappropriated sweets 

 Smiled like yon knot of cowslips on the cliff, 

 Not to be come at by the willing hand : 

 The sober widow, and the young green virgin^ 

 Cropped like a rose before 'tis fully blown 

 Or half its worth disclosed. BLAIR'S GRAVE. 



"Pleasant," says the Gaelic bard, "is the 

 joy of grief! it is like the shower of spring, 

 when it softens the branch of the oak, and the 

 young leaf lifts its green head." In the pe- 

 rusal of many, indeed, we believe most, of the 

 poems which follow, the real mourner may, 

 without indulging a morbid spirit of repining, 

 find comfort and consolation ; and for those yel 



unvisited by sorrow the gay and the thought- 



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