56 THE POETRY OF FLOWERS 
Oh, melancholy Love! amid thy fears, 
Thy darkness, thy despair, there runs a vein 
Of pleasure, like a smile ’mid many tears — 
The pride of sorrow that will not complain — 
The exultation that, in after years, 
The loved one will discover, and in vain, 
How much the heart, silently in its cell, 
Did suffer till it broke, yet nothing tell! 
DIFFICULTY. 
BLACK-THORN. 
This species of plum-tree, from its colour, and from the 
innumerable thorns which it possesses, has been made the 
emblem of difficulty. In France they have a proverb to con¬ 
vey the idea of a difficulty, which compares it to a bundle of 
thorns. 
Love, all-defying Love, who sees 
No charm in trophies won with ease; — 
Whose rarest, dearest fruits of bliss 
Are plucked on Danger’s precipice! 
Bolder than they, who dare not dive 
For pearls, but when the sea’s at rest, 
Love, in the tempest most alive, 
Hath ever held that pearl the best, 
He finds beneath the stormiest water! 
Moore. 
