176 WILD FLOWERS. 
We have thus endeavored to defend our 
beloved friends, the flowers, from the charge of 
disdaining to serve, by showing the true service 
which they render to man ; and now, let us 
give a companion picture to the one above ;— 
it is from “ Nina Sforza 
“ I late was passing l)y a poet’s door, 
Who, on his window-sill, with wasted care. 
Had placed a hungry shrub for light—a want 
That crowded quarter miserly supplied; 
A wild field-rose it was ; it may be slippe 
As sweet remembrance of his wanderings ; 
’Twas withering fast, yet, ’midst its dry, curl’d leaves. 
One sickly bud had struggled into bloom. 
That bud, so pale, so common, fix’d my step; 
I thought it priceless, and, except for shame. 
Had very gladly stolen away a leaf; 
I, whose court-life had ever been perfumed 
With every rarest flower that we know. 
Now, think you, ’twas the rose-bud that I saw ? 
Believe it not! It was the poet’s soul 
Diffused by mental magic, over all 
Which environed the proud connection of his nam 
R. Z. S. Troughton. 
“ Better,” says our most delightful of essayists, 
Leigh Hunt, better hang a wild rose over the 
toilet, than nothing. The eye that looks in the 
