143 
THE POETRY OF FLOWERS. 
Sweet flower, be thou a type to me 
Of blameless joy and mirth, 
Of widely-scatter’d sympathy, 
Embracing all God’s earth— 
Of early-blooming piety, 
And unpretending worth. 
I SEND THE LILIES GIVEN TC ME, 
BY BYRON. 
I send the lilies given to me , 
Though, long before thy hand they touch, 
I know that they must wither’d be ; 
But yet reject them not as such : 
For I have cherish’d them as dear, 
Because they yet may meet thine eye, 
And guide thy soul to mine even here, 
When thou behold’st them drooping nigia, 
And know’st them gather’d by the Rhine, 
And offer’d from my heart to thine! 
The river nobly foams and flows, 
The charm of this enchanted ground. 
And all its thousand turns disclose 
Some fresher beauty varying round 5 
