The Poetry of Flowers. 
53 
First man, the lord of all below, 
A captive sinks beneath my dart ; 
And lovely woman, made to glow, 
Yields the dominion of her heart. 
Through sea, and earth, and boundless sky, 
The fond subjection all must prove, 
Whether they swim the stream or fly, 
Mountain, or vale, or forest rove. 
Nor less the garden’s sweet domain, 
The mossy heath or verdant mead, 
The towering hill, the level plain, 
And fields with blooming life o’erspread. 
THE ALPINE VIOLET. 
BY LORD BYRON. 
The Spring is come, the Violet’s gone, 
The first-born child of the early sun ; 
With us she is but a winter flower, 
The snow on the hills cannot blast her bower ; 
And she lifts up her dewy eye of blue, 
To the youngest sky of the self-same hue. 
But when the Spring comes with her host 
Of flowers, that flower, beloved the most, 
Shrinks from the crowd, that may confuse 
Her heavenly odours and virgin hues. 
Pluck the others, but still remember, 
Their herald, out of dire December ; 
The morning star of all the flowers, 
The pledge of daylight’s lengthened hours, 
And, ’mid the Roses, ne’er forget 
The virgin, virgin Violet. 
