M4 THE POETRY OF FLOWERS. 
Pranks with bright blue the tissue wore 
Of verdant foliage ; and above, 
With milk-white flowers, whence soon shall 
Rich fruitage, to the taste and smell 
Pleasant alike, the strawberry weaves 
Its coronets of three-fold leaves, 
■In mazes through the sloping wood. 
Nor wants there in her dreamy mood, 
What fancy’s sportiveness may think 
A cup, whence midnight elves might drink 
Delicious drops of nectar’d dew, 
While they their fairy sports pursue, 
And roundelays by fount or rill— 
The streak’d and chequer’d daffodil. 
Nor wants there many a flower beside. 
On holt, and hill, and meadow pied ; 
With pale green gloom the upright box, 
And woodland crowfoot’s golden locks ; 
And yellow cinquefoil’s hairy trail; 
And saxifrage with petal pale; 
And purple bilberry’s globelike head; 
And cranberry’s bells-of rosy red; 
And creeping groundsel blue and bright; 
And cranesbill’s streaks of red and white, 
On purple with soft leaves of down, 
And golden tulip’s turban’d crown, 
3weet scented on its bending stem ; 
And bright-eyed star of Bethleuem ; 
With those, the firstlings of their kind, 
Which through the bosky thickets wind 
