64 Floral Poetry. 
THE DEATH OF THE FLOWERS. 
T HE melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year, 
Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sere; 
Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the withered leaves lie dead; 
They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit’s tread. 
The robin and the wren are flown, and from the shrub the jay, 
And from the wood-top calls the crow, through all the gloomy day. 
Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers, that lately sprung and stood 
In brighter light and softer airs, a beauteous sisterhood ? 
Alas ! they all are in their graves—the gentle race. of flowers 
Are lying in their lowly beds, with the fair and good of ours. 
The rain is falling where they lie; but the cold November rain 
Calls not from out the gloomy earth, the lovely ones again. 
The Wind-flower and the Violet, they perished long ago ; 
And the Wild-rose and the Orchis died amid the Summer glow ; 
But on the hill the Golden-rod, and the Aster in the wood, 
And the yellow Sunflower by the brook, in Autumn beauty stood. 
Till fell the frost from the clear cold heaven, as falls the plague on men, 
And the brightness of their smile was gone from upland glade and glen. 
And now, when comes the calm mid-day, as still such days will come, 
To call the squirrel and the bee from out their wintry home ; 
Where the sound of dropping nuts is heard, though all the leaves are still, 
And twinkle in the smoky light the waters of the rill. 
The south-wind searches for the flowers whose fragrance late he bore, 
And sighs to find them in the wood, and by the stream, no more. 
And then I think of one, who in her youthful beauty died ; 
The fair meek blossom that grew up and faded by my side ; 
In the cold moist earth we laid her, when the forest cast the leaf, 
And we wept that one so lovely should have a life so brief; 
Yet not unmeet it was, that one like that young friend of ours, 
So gentle and so beautiful, should perish with the flowers. 
Bryant. 
