As bold and purple, ripe and rosy,

As dowagers right red and cosy :
Grave matrons in the fairy hospitals,

Staid, stately, formal, bearded seneschals;
The painted pageantry of fairy bowers;
The darlings of a region far away,
Late-flowering heaths of Southern Africa,
Fuchsias from Chili, dahlias from Peru,
And strange varieties of motley hue,

Or gorgeous tints, that show what art can do.
But Winter comes,-

They perish; let them go!

There still are flowers, whose ancestors were born Beneath the southern reign of Capricorn,

That deck old Winter under glassy frames.

I love them not, and do not know their names.

I better like the lichen's crackly scale,
The velvet moss, or verdant fox's tail.

But thus it seems that Nature ranges

In perpetuity of changes;

For every age she hath a symbol,

And tells it what it ought to be;

Youth, like Spring-time, light and nimble,

Evanescent in its glee;

Middle age, like woman wedded,
Should be Summer altogether;-
Only mark, it is not needed.

There should be any rainy weather.
Autumn beauties, such there are,
Of forty years, or rather more,
But not so delicately fair

As twenty years ago they were,

Yet rich and ripe as Autumn's store.
And Winter-no, I will not tell
How age is Winter's parallel.

If like it be in anything,

"Tis nearest to successive Spring.

Spring, Summer, Autumn, with their train,

Pass away and come again;

For every spray and every flower,

When sever'd from the natal stem,

May yield its fragrance for an hour
In coronary diadem :

But having done its best, it dies

Its sweetest odours are its parting sighs. But what art thou, that bear'st a name Synonymous with poet's fame;

Thou yellow, husky, arid thing;

Thou mere antipathy to Spring;

Not sweet to smell, nor fair to sight,

And useless as an anchorite,

Who feasted on continual fasting,

Art thou indeed" the Everlasting?"
Yes, so indeed, 'tis ever so;

"Tis right that God should only show
His goodness for a little while.

Brief is the being of a smile,
And pity's tears are quickly dry,
And all good things are born to die;
While things unholy, of small worth,
Endure a weary time on earth.

But think not, therefore, that the good
Is but the Giver's fitful mood.

He only lets us have a taste

Of heavenly good, and then in haste
Withdraws it, that we may be led

To seek it at the fountain-head;
While for the earth he leaves a feint,
The idol of the permanent,—
A something very like, indeed,

But not the same; a worthless weed
That hath the form, but not the power,
The juice, or fragrance of a flower.

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 fond 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.