TO TIIE CACTUS SPECIOSISSIMUS. 
Who hung thy beauty on such rugged stalk, 
Thou glorious flower ? 
Who poured the richest hues. 
In varying radiance, o’er thine ample brow, 
And like a mesh, those tissued stamens laid 
Upon thy crimson lip F 
Thou glorious flower ! 
Metliinks it were no sin to worship thee, 
Such passport hast thou from thy Maker’s hand 
To thrill the soul. Lone, on thy leafless stem, 
Thou bidd’st the queenly rose, with all her buds, 
Do homage, and the greenhouse peerage bow 
Their rainbow coronets. 
Hast thou no thought ? 
No intellectual life ? thou who canst wake 
Man’s heart to such communings ? no sweet word 
With which to answer him ? ’T would almost seem 
That so much beauty needs must have a soul, 
And that such form as tints the gazer’s dream, 
Held higher spirit than the common clod 
On which we tread. 
Yet while we muse, a blight 
Steals o’er thee, and thy shrinking bosom shows 
The mournful symptoms of a wan disease. — 
I will not stay to see thy beauty fade. 
Still must I bear away within my heart 
Thy lesson of our own mortality ; 
The fearful witherings of each blossomed bough 
On which we lean, of every bud we fain 
Would hide within our bosoms from the touch 
Of the destroyer. 
So instruct us, Lord ! 
Thou Father of the sunbeam and the soul, 
Even by the simple sermon of a flower, 
To cling to Thee. 
MRS. SIGOURNEY. 
