






186 POETRY OF FLOWERS. 
And dost thou not love, when leaves are greenest, 
And summer has just begun, 
When in the silence of moonlight thou leanest, 
Where glistening waters run, 
To see, by that gentle and peaceful beam, 
The willow bend down to the sparkling stream ? 
And, oh ! in a lovely autumnal day, 
When leaves are changing before thee, 
Do not Nature’s charms, as they slowly decay, 
Shed their own mild influence o’er thee ? 
And hast thou not felt, as thou stood’st to gaze, 
The touching lesson such scene displays ? 
It should be thus, at an age like thine; 
And it has been thus with me; 
When the freshness of feeling and heart were mine, 
As they never more can be: 
Yet think not I ask thee to pity my lot, 
Perhaps I see beauty where thou dost not. 
Hast thou seen, in winter’s stormiest day, 
The trunk of a blighted oak, 
Not dead but sinking in slow decay 
Beneath Time’s resistless stroke, 
Round which a luxuriant ivy had grown, 
And wreathed it with verdure no longer its own? 
Perchance thou hast seen this sight, and then, 
As I at thy years might do, 
