Floral Poetry. 
6 3 
O precious, precious moments ! 
Pale flowers ! ye’re types of those : 
The saddest, sweetest, dearest; 
Because, like those, the nearest 
To an eternal close. 
Pale flowers ! pale perishing flowers ! 
I woo your gentle breath : 
I leave the Summer Rose 
For younger, blither brows; 
Tell me of change and death. 
Anon. 
WITHERING! WITHERING! 
W ITHERING—withering—all are withering ! 
All of hope’s flowers that youth hath nursed; 
Flowers of love too early blossoming; 
Buds of ambition, too frail to burst. 
Faintly—faintly—oh, how faintly ! 
I feel life’s pulses ebb and flow; 
Yet sorrow, I know thou dealest daintily, 
With one who should not wish to live moe. 
Nay ! why, young heart, thus timidly shrinking ? 
Why doth thy upward wing thus tire ? 
Why are thy pinions so droopingly sinking, 
When they should only waft thee higher? 
Upward—upward—let them be waving, 
Lifting the soul toward her place of birth ; 
There are guerdons there, more worthy thy having, 
Far more than any these lures of the earth. 
Hoffman. 
