HARTLEY COLERIDGE. 
To sit upon thy slender stem, 
A solitary diadem, 
Adorning latest Autumn with 
A relic sweet of vernal pith ? 
0 Heaven ! if, as faithful I believe, 
Thou wilt the prayer of faithful love receive, 
Let it be so with me ! I was a child— 
Of large belief, though froward, wild. 
Gladly I listened to the holy word. 
And deemed my little prayers to God were heard. 
All things I loved, however strange or odd, 
As deeming all things were beloved by God. 
In youth and manhood’s careful sultry hours, 
The garden of my youth bore many flowers 
That now are faded ; but my early faith, 
Though thinner far than vapor, spectre, wraith, 
Lighter than aught the rude wind blows away, 
Has yet outlived the rude tempestuous day, 
And may remain, a witness of the Spring, 
A sweet, a holy, and a lovely thing; 
The promise of another Spring to me, 
My lovely, lone, and lost Anemone 1 
