THE POETRY OF FLOWERS. 
123 
Oli! then most gracefully they wave in the forest like 
a sea, 
And dear as they are beautiful are those Fern leaves 
to me. 
THE FLOWERING FERN— Reverie. 
Wordsworth thus speaks of its retiring properties:— 
Fair Ferns and flowers, and chiefly that tall Fern 
So stately, of the Queen Osmunda named, 
Plant lovelier in its own retired abode 
On Grasmere’s beach, than Naiad by the side 
Of Grecian brook, or lady of the mere, 
Sole sitting by the shores of old romance. 
FORGET-ME-NOT.— Forget-me-not. 
That name, it speaks in accents dear of love, and hope, 
and joy, and fear; 
It softly tells an absent friend that links of love should 
never rend; 
Its whispers waft on swelling breeze, o’er hill and dale, 
by land and seas, 
Forget-me-not! 
Gem of the rill! we love to greet thy blossoms smiling 
at our feet. 
We fancy to thy flow’ret given a semblance of the azure 
heaven; 
And deem thine eye of gold to be the star that gleams 
so brilliantly. 
And another writer, whose name we do not know, 
reminds us of 
