









: 244, POETRY OF FLOWERS. 
Lips must fade and roses wither, 
All sweet times be o’er, — 
They onlysmile, and, murmuring “'Thither!” 
Stay with us no more: 
And yet oft-times a look or smile, 
Forgotten in a kiss’s while, 
Years after from the dark will start, 
And flash across the trembling heart, 
Thou hast given me many roses; 
But never one, like this, 
O’er-floods both sense and spirit 
With such a deep, wild bliss ;— 
We must have instincts that glean up 
Sparse drops of this life in the cup, 
Whose taste shall give us all that we 
Can prove of immortality. 
Earth’s stablest things are shadows 3 
And, in the life to come, 
Haply some chance-saved trifle 
May teil of this old home ; 
As now sometimes we seem to find, 
In a dark crevice of the mind, 
Some relic, which, long pondered o’er, 
Hints faintly at a life before. 
