




















18 The Poetry of Flowers. 

I doubt not they felt the spirit that came 
From her glowing fingers through all their frame. 
She sprinkled bright water from the stream 
On those that were faint with the sunny beam ; 
And out of the cups of the heavy flowers 
She emptied the rain of the thunder-showers. 
She lifted their heads with her tender hands, 
And sustained them with rods and osier bands ; 
If the flowers had been her own infants, she 
Could never have nursed them more tenderly, 
And all killing insects and gnawing worms, 
And things of obscene and unlovely forms, 
She bore in a basket of Indian woof 
Into the rough woods far aloof— 
In a basket of grasses and wild flowers full, 
The freshest her gentle hands could pull, 
For the poor banished insects, whose intent, 
Although they did ill, was innocent. 
But the bee and the beam-like ephemeris, 
Whose path is the lightning’s, and the soft moths 
that kiss ; 
The sweet lips of the flowers, and harm not, did she 
Make her attendant angels be. 
And many an antenatal tomb, 
Where butterflies dream of the life to come, 
She left clinging round the smooth and dark 
Edge of the odorous cedar bark. 
This fairest creature, from earliest spring, 
‘Thus moved through the garden, ministering, 
All the sweet season of the summer-tide, 
And ere the first leaf looked brown—she died, 


