1'HE POETRY OF FLOWERS. 
159 
And musing by love’s haunted rill, 
Earth’s “ river of the blest,” 
To see how sweetly heaven still, 
Is mirror’d on its breast, 
And feel thou, there, art nearer far 
To that bright land of sun and star! 
THE ALPINE FLOWERS. 
BY MRS. SIGOURNEY. 
Meek dwellers ’mid yon terror-stricken cliffs! 
With brows so pure, and incense-breathing lips, 
Whence are ye ?—Did some white-wing’d mes. 
senger 
On Mercy’s missions trust your timid germ 
To the cold cradle of eternal snows ? 
Or, breathing on the callous icicles, 
Bid them with tear-drops nurse ye ?— 
—Tree nor shrub 
Dare that drear atmosphere : no polar pine 
Uprears a veteran front; yet there ye stand, 
Leaning your cheeks against the thick-ribb’d ice, 
And looking up with brilliant eyes to Him 
Who bids you bloom unblanch’d amid the waste 
Of desolation. Man, who, panting, toils 
O’er slippery steeps, or, trembling treads the 
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