The Poetry of Flowers. 
117 
Below a circling fence, its leaves are seen, 
Wrinkled and keen; 
No grazing cattle through their prickly round 
Can reach to wound, 
But as they grow where nothing is to fear, 
Smooth and unarmed the pointless leaves appear. 
ANACREON TO THE ROSE. 
While we invoke the wreathdd Spring, 
Resplendent Rose ! to thee we’ll sing— 
Resplendent Rose ! the flower of flowers, 
Whose breath perfumes Olympus' bowers, 
Whose virgin blush, of chastened dye, 
Enchants so much our mortal eye. 
Oft has the poet’s magic tongue 
The Rose’s fair luxuriance sung ; 
And long the Muses, heavenly maids, 
Have reared it in their tuneful shades. 
When, at the early glance of morn, 
It sleeps upon the glittering thorn, 
’Tis sweet to dare the tangled fence, 
To cull the timid floweret thence, 
And wipe, with tender hand, away 
The tear that on its blushes lay ! 
’Tis sweet to hold the infant stems, 
Yet dropping with Aurora’s gems, 
And fresh inhale the spicy sighs 
That from the weeping buds arise. 
When revel reigns, when mirth is high, 
And Bacchus beams in every eye, 
Our rosy fillets scent exhale, 
And fill with balm the fainting gale. 
