142 
GENTIAN. 
Whence are ye?—Did some white-winged messenger, 
On Mercy’s missions, trust your timid germ 
To the cold cradle of eternal snows? 
Or, breathing on the callous icicles, 
Bid them with tear-drops nurse ye? — 
—Tree nor shrub 
Dare that drear atmosphere; no polar pine 
Uprears a veteran front; yet there ye stand, 
Leaning your cheeks against the thick-ribb’d ice, 
And looking up with brilliant eyes to Him 
Who bids you bloom unblanch’d amid the waste 
Of desolation. Man, who, panting, toils 
O’er slippery steeps, or, trembling, treads the verge 
Of yawning gulfs, o’er which the headlong plunge 
Is to eternity, looks shuddering up, 
And marks ye in your placid loveliness — 
Fearless, yet frail — and, clasping his chill hands, 
Blesses your pencill’d beauty. ’Mid the pomp 
Of mountain summits, rushing on the sky, 
And chaining the rapt soul in breathless awe, 
He bows to bind you drooping to his breast, 
Inhales your spirit from the frost-wing’d gale, 
And freer dreams of heaven. 
