TO THE CACTUS SPECIOSISSIMUS. 
BY MRS. SIGOURNEY. 
Who hung thy beauty on such rugged stalk, 
Thou glorious flower ? 
Who pour’d the richest hues, 
In varying radiance, o’er thine ample brow, 
And like a mesh those tissued stamens laid 
Upon thy crimson lip ?— 
Thou glorious flower! 
Mcthinks it were no sin to worship thee, 
Such passport hast thou from thy Maker’s hand, 
To thrill the soul. Lone on thy leafless stem, 
Thou bid’st the queenly Rose with all her buds 
Do homage, and the green-house peerage bow 
Their rainbow coronets. 
Hast thou no thought ? 
No intellectual life ? thou who can’st wake 
Man’s heart to such communings ? no sweet word 
With which to answer him ? ’Twould almost seem 
That so much beauty needs must have a soul, 
And that such form, as tints, the gazer’s dream, 
Held higher spirit than the common clod 
On which we tread. 
