CHRYSANTHEMUMS. 1 7 



O'er slopes of blushing clover — faint at first, 

 With many a fluttered echo frolicking, 

 It fell its windy way — then loitered down, 

 With lingering cadence of a long delay, 

 Lightly as in the tenderest deeps of even 

 The yellow blossom of the new moon drops 

 Below the west that waits it. 



'Twas the voice 

 Of all the elves of all the flowers that blow, 

 Flocking to find the Spring, who slumbered yet, 

 Nursed by the blue-eyed April. Willow plumes, 

 Harebell, and cowslip and anemone ; 

 The silver cinquefoil, and the columbine 

 That bursts, a lance of hoarded light, from earth, 

 And swings its red flame on the shining tip ; 

 The purple vetches, washed by salt sea sprays ; 

 The frail convolvulus, that, ere the year 

 Is at the flood, leagues with the building bird 

 And the rude way-side tangles o'er her nest. 

 Precious to plot and pleached alley, too, 

 The mimic nun of the snow-drop, and the friar 

 Dwelhng within the hooded aconite; 

 The maidens of the pale chrysanthemum, 

 The royal lady of the proud and fair 



