POETRY OF FLOWERS. 
171 
And is it thus ? I said, and sigh’d ; 
Must things so lovely meet decay ? 
Ah, yes! and are not human flowers 
As frail as they ! 
See yon fair child with laughing eye. 
Unmark’d by care that cherub face ; 
But ere the morrow he may lie 
In death’s embrace. 
And that brave youth, whose manly form 
Would seem the tyrant to defy. 
The stamp of death is on his brow; 
He too must die. 
’Tis even so, the brave, the fair. 
The opening bud, the full blown flower. 
Alike may wither, fade, and die 
In one short hour. 
Our hope is like this beautious bud. 
Which seem’d to be the garden’s pride. 
And lov’d ones, like the fragile thing. 
Have drooped and died. 
But as the wither’d rose-leaves yield 
Sweet perfume when their beauty’s fled. 
So let our virtues ever live. 
When we are dead. 
