50 
THE FLOWER DIAL. 
In whose colour’d vase might sleep the dew,! 
Like a pearl in an ocean shell. 
To such sweet signs might the time have! 
flow’d 
In a golden current on, 
Ere from the garden, man’s first abode, 
The glorious guests were gone 
So might the days have been brightly told— 
Those days of song and dreams— 
When shepherds gather’d their flocks of old. 
By the blue Arcadian streams. 
So in those isles of delight, that rest 
Far off in a breezeless main, 
Which many a bark, with a weary quest, 
Has sought, but still in vain 
Yet is not life, in its real flight, 
Mark’d thus—even thus—on earth, 
By the closing of one hope’s delight, 
And another’s gentle birth ? 
Oh ! let us live so that flower by flower. 
Shutting in turn, may leave 
A lingerer still for the sunset hour, 
A charm for the shaded eve. 
—Mrs. Hkmans. 
