28 ORCHIDS. 
Think of all these treasures, 
Matchless works and pleasures, 
Every one a marvel, more than thought can say; 
Then think in what bright showers 
We thicken leaf and bowers, 
And with what heaps of sweetness half stifle wanton May; 
Think of the mossy forests 
By the bee-birds haunted 
And all those Amazonian plains, lone lying as enchanted. 
Oh! true things are fables, 
Fit for sagest tables, 
And the flowers are true things — yet no fables they; 
Fables were not more 
Bright, nor loved of yore — 
Yet they grew not, like the flowers, by every old path way; 
Grossest hand can test us— 
Fools may prize us never — 
Yet we rise, and rise, and rise— marvels sweet for ever. 
Who shall say that flowers 
Dress not heaven’s own bowers? 
Who its love, without us, can fancy— or sweet floor? 
Who shall even dare 
To say we sprang not there — 
And came not down, that Love might bring one piece of Heaven the more? 
Oh, pray believe that angels 
From those blue dominions 
Brought us in their white laps down, *twixt their golden pinions. 
Leicu Hunr. 
