Page:The Romance of Nature; or, The Flower-Seasons Illustrated.djvu/325

203 But even while I watched these flowers, the queen

Began to droop,

Her proud array flagged quickly, her high head

Low, low, did stoop,

And soon the cause of this I could descry;

The vase, whose waters fed her pride, was dry.

And she, deprived of this distinctive wealth,

No more might rank

Among the great, or beautiful, or proud,

But dimly sank,

In loathsome dusk deformity, beside

The very things o'er whom her swollen pride

Had been most arrogant. And when I saw

Her swift decay,

And marked the giddy flies on other flowers

As fondly play,

As they had toyed with her so lately lost,

Methought how false was all her haughty boast!

How vain that pride of birth, or wealth, or state,

Or fleeting power,

Which blots the vaunted reason of our race,

To whom this flower