Page:The Romance of Nature; or, The Flower-Seasons Illustrated.djvu/321

199 Now, rocked upon her fragile trembling stem,

The soft Harebell

Is slumbering light and dreamily;—for sure

Bright dreams may well

Be thought to visit things so pure and fair,

Whose deaths no anguish have, whose lives no care.

Oh! that I were a flower to slumber so!

To wake at morn

E'en with as lithe a spirit; and to die,

As these return

Unto their mother-earth, when air and sky

Have caught their od'rous immortality.

The fragrance is the spirit of the flower,

E'en as the soul

Is our ethereal portion, We can ne'er

Hold or control

One more than other. Passing sweet must be

The visions, gentle things, that visit ye!

How happily ye live in the pure light

Of loveliness:—

Do ye not feel how deeply—wondrously—

Ye cheer and bless

Our chequered sojourn on this weary earth,

Whose wildest, dreariest spots to FLOWERS have given birth?