THE FORGET-ME-NOT.

THERE is a little and a pretty flower,
That you may find in many a garden plot;
Yet wild it is, and grows amid the stour
Of public roads, as in close-wattled bower:
Its name in English is, Forget-me-not.

Sweet was the fancy of those antique ages That put a heart in every stirring leaf, Writing deep morals upon Nature's pages, Turning sweet flowers into deathless sages, To calm our joy and sanctify our grief.

And gladly would I know the man or child, But no!-it surely was a pensive girl

That

gave so sweet a name to floweret wild, A harmless innocent and unbeguiled, To whom a flower is precious as a pearl.

Fain would I know, and yet I can but guess, How the blue floweret won a name so sweet.

Did some fond mother, bending down to bless
Her sailing son, with last and long-caress,

Give the small plant to guard him through the fleet?

Did a kind maid, that thought her lover all

By which a maid would fain beloved be,
Leaning against a ruin'd abbey wall,

Make of the flower an am'rous coronal,

That still should breathe and whisper, "Think of me?"

But were I good and holy as a saint,

Or hermit-dweller in secluded grot,

If e'er the soul in hope and love were faint,
Then, like an antidote to mortal taint,
I'd give the pretty flower Forget-me-not.

AZALEA.

WELCOME, Sweet stranger, from the gorgeous East! Nature in thee puts forth her beauteous might,

For aye array'd as for a marriage feast,

Or like an incarnation of pure light.

What man can see thee so superbly drest,

Without a thought of her whom he loves best?

Yet when I think of her, whom I love well,
I do not think of such luxurious flowers.

Ill suited to a humble home like ours,
If you and I, my love, together dwell,
Were the rich perfume, and the luscious swell
Of herbs that emigrate from Indian bowers.
Better for us the plant that feels the showers
And the sweet sunshine,-by our mossy well.

Better be like the buttercups so many,

That in good England no one thinks of any, While yet we grow in our own native land, Than the Azalea, solitary, grand,

Perfuming the far banks of Alleghany,

Or withering in Australia's thirsty sand.

THE GUERNSEY LILY.

AMARYLLIS SAMIENSIS.

"This plant was brought from Japan, where it was found by Kaemfer and also by Thunberg, who visited that country in 1775. It was first cultivated in the garden of John Morin, at Paris, where it blowed for the first time on the 7th of October, 1634. It was then made known by Jacob Cornutus, under the name of Narcissus Japonicus flore rutilo.' After this it was again noticed by John Ray, in 1665, who called it the Guernsey Lily. A ship, returning from Japan, was wrecked on the coasts of Guernsey, and a number of the bulbs of this plant which were on board, being cast on shore, took root in that sandy soil."-Beckman's Inventions, vol. iii.

FAR in the East, and long to us unknown,
A lily bloom'd, of colours quaint and rare;
Not like our lilies, white, and dimly fair,
But clad like Eastern monarch on his throne.
A ship there was by stress of tempest blown,
And wreck'd on beach, all sandy, flat and bare ;-
The storm-god bated of his rage to spare
The queenly flower, foredoom'd to be our own.
The Guernsey fisher, seeking what the sea
Had stolen to aid his hungry poverty,

Starts to behold the stranger from afar,
And wonders what the gorgeous thing might be,
That like an unsphered and dejected star

Gleam'd in forlorn and mateless majesty.

SONNETS AND OTHER POEMS

REFERRING TO THE PERIOD OF

INFANCY AND CHILDHOOD.