plant. 93 
Oh! she is colder than the mountain's snow. 
To such a subtile purity she’s wrought, 
&he’s prayed and fasted to a walking thought: 
She’s an enchanted feast, most fair to sight, 
And starves the appetite she does invite ; 
Flies from the touch of sense, and if you dare 
To name but love she vanishes to air. 
Crown. 
In thy fair brow there’s such a legend writ 
Of chastity, as blinds the adulterous eye: 
Not the mountain ice, 
Congealed to crystals, is so frosty chaste 
As thy victorious soul, which conquers man, 
And man’s proud tyrant-passion. 
Dryden. 
Like the Mimosa shrinking from 
The blight of some familiar finger— 
Like flowers which but in secret bloom, 
Where aye the sheltered shadows linger, 
And which beneath the hot noon-ray 
Would fold their leaves and fade away—. 
The flowers of Love in secret cherished, 
In loneliness and silence nourished, 
Shrink backward from the searching eye, 
Until the stem whereon they flourished, 
Their shrine, the human heart, has perished, 
Although themselves may never die. 
J. G. Whittier. 
