DROPS FROM FLORA’S CUP. 109 
THE CHRYSANTHEMUM. 
S. E. K. 
Emblem of friendship, lovely flower, 
(Meet gift from friendship’s hand,) 
Like thee, -when skies autumnal lower, 
Her brightest charms expand. 
Her friends, like thine, in Flora’s bowers, 
Long faded from the view, 
Have fled, perchance, with summer hours, 
As bright and transient too. 
But o’er these scattered relics sere, 
Thy perfumed sweets are shed, 
As friendship’s sympathetic tear 
Embalms the lovely dead. 
Sweet flower — though verdant — fragrant — fair, 
’Midst winter’s cheerless gloom, 
Death must, at length, those charms impair, 
And give them to the tomb. 
But friendship shall the blighting frost, 
Of death itself defy, 
And renovated beauty boast, 
In climes beyond the sky. 
