Poems of home and country :: :: University of Virginia Library

There bloom three young flowers, so sweet and fair,
In Nature's wild, flourishing garden,
On mountains and hillsides, in forests and vales,
As if playing watcher and warden;
Your beauties, sweet flowers, are rich and divine;
They bloom in the field; in the nosegay they shine.

The buttercup, first, all spring-time so bright,
Like glittering beads, strung in order;
Its blossoms like dew-drops, the daughters of night,
Gem the fields, and the green roadsides border;
Wherever its clear yellow flowers you see,
Its honey-cup swells with the food of the bee.

The violet, next, in its liveliest blue,
In green, clasping leaflets half-covered,
The spring-meadow fills with its fragrant perfume,
Where the red-breast, by morning-light, hovered;
The image of mildness and modesty, too,
Is the violet-flower, of heavenly hue.

And then, where the sparkling fountain gleams,
Beneath the noon-sunlight so splendid,
The flower-de-luce, with its triple bell, smiles,
Till the days of the spring-time are ended;
'T is sacred to friendship and sacred to love,
The emblem of union in heaven above.