62 
PRIMROSE. 
So Virtue blooms, brought forth amid the storms 
Of chill adversity; in some lone walk 
Of life she rears her head, 
Obscure and unobserved ; — 
While every bleaching breeze that on her blows. 
Chastens her spotless purity of breast, 
And hardens her to bear, 
Serene, the ills of life. 
THE PRIMROSE. 
MRS. HEMANS. 
I saw it in my evening walk, 
A little lonely flower; 
Under a hollow bank it grew, 
Deep in a mossy bower. 
An oak’s gnarl’d root to roof the cave, 
With gothic fretwork sprung, 
Whence jewell’d fern, and arum leaves, 
And ivy garlands hung. 
And close beneath came sparkling out, 
From an old tree’s fallen shell, 
A little rill, that dipt about 
The lady in her cell. 
And there, methought, with bashful pride, 
She seem’d to sit and look 
On her own maiden loveliness, 
Pale imaged in the brook. 
