The Poetry of Flowers. 
ii 
Blest Flowers ! There breathes not one 
unfraught 
With lessons sweet and new ; 
The Rose, in Taste’s own garden wrought ; 
The Pansy, nurse of tender thought; 
The Wallflower, tried and true ; 
The purple Heath, so lone and fair, 
(O how unlike the world’s vain glare !) 
The Daisy, so contently gay, 
Opening her eyelids with the day ; 
The Gorse-bloom, never sad or sere, 
But golden bright, 
As gems of night, 
And fresh and fragrant all the year ; 
Each leaf, each bud of classic lore, 
Oak, Hyacinth, and Floramore ; 
The Cowslip, graceful in her woe ; 
The Hawthorn’s smile, the Poppy’s glow, 
This ripe with balm for present sorrow, 
And that with raptures for to-morrow. 
The flowers are culled ; and each lithe stem 
With Woodbine band we braid— 
With Woodbine, type of Life’s best gem, 
Of Truth that will not fade. 
The wreath is wove ; do Thou, blest Power, 
That brood’st o’er leaflet, fruit, and flower, 
Embalm it with Thy love ; 
O make it such as angels wear, 
Pure, bright, as decked earth’s first-born pair, 
Whilst free in Eden’s grove, 
From herb and plant they brushed the dew, 
And neither sin nor sorrow knew. 
