 | The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes |  |
ENIGMA
II
It came unheard, and darkness veiled its birth,The child of heaven, yet only seen on earth;
It lay half hidden in the folded leaves,
The sleeping floweret round her bosom weaves,
And when the moonbeam touched it from afar,
It shone and sparkled like a fallen star;
But ah, it trembled in the breath of day,
And softly faded like a dream away.
Such was its fate—and thus, without a stain,
It came to earth, and sought the skies again;
A rosy cradle, and a golden shroud,
Born in a flower, and dying in A CLOUD.
| The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes | |