Flower o' the thorn :: :: University of Virginia Library

Rose, lily, tulip, flood
The city grey and chill
With Winter's wind and wet
And this our season sour
Of fog and frost and mud
With kindly colour fill:
With their sweet summer scent
The roads are redolent.
The scions of the sun,
From lands where men forget,
In summer never done,
The frost-time and the fret
Of Winter's woeful hour,
Upon our Northern air,
Whilst snow yet seals the earth,
Their horn of plenty shower
And brim our every street,
For pity of our dearth,
With blossoms rathe and rare,
The rearlings of the heat.

See, all the frost-blurred ways,
In February's despite,
With blossom are ablaze:
In vain the grey sky glowers
On pavements hedged with flowers.
Its harvest of delight,
The robe of Springtide new,
Red, orange, yellow, white,
Pink, crimson, purple, blue,
That clothes its blissful bowers,
We borrow from the South,
To stay withal our drouth
Of fragrance and of hue.

Who is it “Winter!” saith?
Nay, blooming far and nigh,
Mimosas, with their breath
Of honey and of myrrh,
Tell all the passers-by
Their tale of myriad Mays;
See, lilies white aver
The triumph of July;
And shedding o'er the rime
Its scent of summer-time,
Its breath of blazing days,
The rose gives him the lie.

Poor pilgrims of the Prime,
Frail firstlings of the sun,
That must, ere summer done,
Forsake your flowering clime
And to our cheerless one
Go wandering, I grieve
For you, that, driven of need
To follow Fortune's law,
Your sunny South must leave
And hither brought to feed
The Moloch city's maw,
Must life and light forgo
And droop in dark and snow,
To pleasure us who pine
In Winter's iron clutch
And yearn to see and smell
And ours, by very touch,
To make the flowering sign
Of Summer full a-swell
In lands where Heaven looks down
Less enviously on earth,

Where ever more benign,
Beneath a softer star,
The influences are,
That govern death and birth.

Yet, in that olden book,
Whereunto still we look
For counsel to this day,
“No greater love a man
“Hath,” written is it, “than
“This, that his life he lay
“Down for his friends.” And you,
Bright blooms, this proof, above
All others, of your love,
You give us, in that thus
Your young life sweet and new,
Your virginal estate,
You spend, to solace us,
Who, in our churlish clime,
Where Winter lingers late,
Go wearying for the Prime,
Nor grudge the full fell price
Of your sweet sacrifice
With every grace to pay:
Nay, whether upon breast,
In hand or window-place,
Beneath our stranger sky,
Dear denizens of field
And wood, at man's behest
Exiled, you droop and die,
Your balmiest of breath,
Unstinting, still you yield,
Nor to our sight refuse
Your fairest forms and hues,

But do your last and best
To pleasure us in death.

So take our thanks, fair flowers,
With this your love and grace
That charm our cheerless hours,
In Winter's frowning face;
And may your martyrdom,
Your exile and your pain,
Be otherwhere, in some
Less uncongenial clime,
Some better, brighter place
Than this our realm of rime
And mist and mud and rain,
Requited unto you!
May you in death become
Inhabitants anew
Of some flower-paradise
Of wood and wold and plain,
Beneath a sky of blue,
As far much more of price
Than that which you regret
As your sweet Southern strand
Is than our loveless land
Of cold and wind and wet!