Page:The Romance of Nature; or, The Flower-Seasons Illustrated.djvu/160

94 Perchance there grew a Jasmine-tree

Beside his own ancestral hall,

Where he had loved, in childhood's glee,

To watch its short-lived blossoms fall:

Alas! how soon those blossoms died,

When severed from their native stem!

Did not like early doom betide

That captive? Drooped he not like them?

Well knew the slender Jasmine-tree

Within which casement high to peep,

And where on soft winds gracefully

With pendant starry branch to sweep.

She looked in bowers where ladyes sung

Of love and knightly fealty,

And silently her sweet sighs flung

O'er many a tale of chivalrie.

And when to battle's sanguine plain

Each gallant knight must fearless hie,

And ladye-loves gazed on the train,

With heaving breast and weeping eye,

The lovely Jasmine drooped her head,

As if in grief for those so dear,

And from her snowy chalice shed,

In sympathy, a dewy tear.