THE POETRY OF FLOWERS. 
251 
So blooms this lonely plant, nor dreads 
Her annual funeral. 
Here closed the meditative strain; 
But air breathed soft that day, 
The hoary mountain heights were cheer’d, 
The sunny vale look’d gay; 
And to the primrose of the rock 
I gave this after lay. 
I sang—Let myriads of bright flowers, 
Like thee, in field and grove, 
Revive unenvied;—mightier far, 
Than tremblings that reprove 
Our vernal tendencies to hope, 
Is God’s redeeming love ; 
That love which changed—for wan disease, 
For sorrow that had bent, 
O’er hopeless dust, for wither’d age— 
Their moral element, 
And turn’d the thistles of a curse 
To types beneficent. 
Sin-blighted though we are, we too, 
The reasoning sons of men, 
From eur oblivious winter call’d, 
Shall rise and breathe again; 
And in eternal summer lose 
Our threescore years and ten. 
