THE POETRY OF FLOWERS 
185 
“ Alas ! what can we do, 
The rose and poet too, 
Who both antedate our mission 
In an unprepared season ? 
“ Drop leaf—be silent song— 
Cold things we came among! 
We must warm them, we must warm them 
Ere we even hope to charm them. 
“ Howbeit,” here his face 
Ilighten’d around the place, 
So to mark the outward turning 
Of his spirit’s inward burning. 
“ Something it is to hold 
In God’s worlds manifold, 
First reveal’d to creatures duty, 
A new form of His mild beauty. 
“ Whether that form respect 
The sense or intellect, 
Holy rest in soul or pleasance, 
The chief Beauty’s sign of presence. 
“ Holy in me and thee, 
Rose fallen from the tree, 
Though the world stand dumb around us, 
All unable to expound us 
