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LOSSOMS that lowly bend,

Shutting your leaves from evening's chilly dew,
While your rich odours heavily ascend,
The flitting winds to woo.

I walk at silent eve,

When scarce a breath is in the garden bowers,
And many a vision and wild fancy weave,
Midst you, ye lovely flowers;

Beneath the cool green boughs,

And perfumed bells of the fresh blossomed lime,
That stoop and gently touch my feverish brow,
Fresh in their summer prime;

Or in the mossy dell,

Where the pale primrose trembles at a breath;
Or where the lily, by the silent well,

Beholds her form beneath;

The Voice of the Flowers.

Or where the rich queen-rose

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Sits throned and blushing, 'midst her leaves and moss; Or where the wind-flower, pale and fragile, blows,

Or violets banks emboss.

Here do I love to be,

Mine eye alone in passionate love to dwell
Upon the loveliness and purity

Of every bud and bell.

Oh blessedness, to lie

By the clear brook, where the long-bennet dips!
To press the rose-bud in its purity

Unto the burning lips!

To lay the weary head
Upon the bank, with daisies all beset,
Or with bared feet, at early dawn, to tread
O'er mosses cool and wet!

And then to sit at noon,

When bees are humming low, and birds are still,
And drowsy is the faint uncertain tone

Of the swift woodland rill.

And dreams can then reveal

That, wordless though ye be, ye have a tone,
A language, and a power, that I may feel,
Thrilling my spirit lone.

Ye speak of hope and love,

Bright as your hues, and vague as your perfume; Of changeful, fragile thoughts, that brightly move Men's hearts amid their gloom.

Ye speak of human life,

Its mystery, the beautiful and brief;

Its sudden fading, 'midst the tempest strife,
E'en as a fragile leaf.

And, more than all, ye speak

Of might and power, of mercy, of the One
Eternal who hath strewed you fair and meek,
To glisten in the sun;

To gladden all the earth

With bright and beauteous emblems of his grace, That showers its gift of uncomputed worth,

In every clime and place.

BROWNE.

LOVE'S WREATH.

HEN Love was a child, and went idling round
Among flowers the whole summer's day,
One morn in the valley a bower he found,
So sweet it allured him to stay.

O'erhead from the trees hung a garland fair,
A fountain ran darkly beneath :

'Twas pleasure that hung the bright flowers up there, Love knew it, and jumped at the wreath.

But Love did not know-and, at his weak years,
What urchin was likely to know?-

That Sorrow had made, of her own salt tears,
That fountain which murmured below.

He caught at the wreath, but with too much haste,
As boys when impatient will do;

It fell in those waters of briny taste,
And the flowers were all wet through.

Yet this is the wreath he wears night and day;

And, though it all sunny appears,

With Pleasure's own lustre, each leaf, they say,

Still tastes of the fountain of tears.

MOCRE.

BEAUTY WARNED BY THE FLOWERS.

TRUST not, sweet soul! those curled waves of gold,
With gentle tides that on your temples flow !
Nor temples spread with flakes of virgin snow!
Nor snow of cheeks, with Tyrian grain enrolled;
Trust not those shining lights which wrought my woe
When first I did their azure rays behold;

Nor voice whose sounds more strange effects do show
Than of the Thracian harper have been told.
Look to this dying lily, fading rose !

Dark hyacinth, of late whose blushing beams
Made all the neighbouring herbs and grass rejoice!
And think how little is 'twixt life's extremes!
The cruel tyrant, that did kill those flowers,
Shall once, ah me! not spare that spring of yours.

DRUMMOND.