THE POETRY OF FLOWERS. 
WILD FLOWERS. 
BY SHELLY. 
bream’d that, as I wander’d by the way, 
Bare winter suddenly was changed to spring, 
And gentle odours led my steps astray, 
Mix’d with a sound of waters murmuring 
Along a shelving bank of turf, which lay 
Under a copse, and hardly dared to fling 
Its green arms round the bosom of the stream, 
But kiss’d it and then fled, as thou mightest in 
a dream. 
There grew pied wind-flowers and violets, 
Daisies, those pearl’d Arcturi of the earth, 
The constellated flower that never sets; 
Faint oxlips; tender blue-bells, at whose birth 
The sod scarce heaved; and that tall flower that 
wets 
Its mother’s face with heaven-collected tears, 
When the low wind, its playmate’s voice, it hears. 
And in the warm hedge grew lush eglantine, 
Green cowbind and the moonlight-colour’d 
May, 
And cherry blossoms, and white cups, whose win® 
Was the bright dew yet drain’d not by the day; 
And wild roses, and ivy serpentine, 
