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SORROWFUL NYCTANTHES, 
NYCTANTHES, ARBOR-TRISTIS. 
Is not your world a mournful one 
When your sisters close their eyes, 
And your soft breath meets not a lingering tone 
Of song in the starry skies ? 
Take ye no joy in the day-springs mirth 
When it kindles the sparks of dew ? 
And the thousand strains of the forest’s mirth 
Shall they gladden all but you ? 
It is said of the birds which inhabit the torrid zone, 
that what they gain in beauty of plumage over those of 
colder climates, they lose in melody; for when, as the 
poet says, — 
—“ Nature bids them shine 
Array’d in all the beauteous beams of day, 
Yet, frugal still, she humbles them in song.” 
Not so, however, with the productions of the vegetable 
world: they, for the most part, possess both a gorgeous¬ 
ness of bloom, and a richness of fragrance, of which, one 
