Flower Pieces and other poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

In idle shade to mark them one by one
We may not loiter, for the waning hours
Through garden, field, and woodland haste us on,
To match no meaner flowers.

This Passion-Flow'r, the delicate and strange
And dim, as though half-faded into air
By enchantment, or awaiting some high change,
Let none but Coleridge wear.

Midst quaintly crumpled leaves the Violet
Hides close and warm its tufts of sweetness blue,
For Hood;—and if his flower be softly wet,
Say, is it more than due?

Aspiring, shrinking, Lily of the Vale,
The word ‘Elizabeth’ is faintly toll'd
From all thine arching chime of silver pale
In dark green turret-fold.

Run, children! run away to Mary Howitt
With early Primrose-bunches and a song.
To Barnes (true poet, if not many know it)
Let Apple-bloom belong.

‘The milk-white Thorn’ where ploughmen at mid-day
And lovers in the friendly gloaming sit,
And every wild-bird brings its sweetest lay,
For whom but Burns is fit?

Geranium, thou, methinks, for Emerson;
The choice and home-familiar, featly blent,
Mystical naivety, fresh antiqueness, run
Through shape, fine hues, and scent,

And Thomas Cárlyle—think you he being named
Among the Muse's children, 'twould offend her?
Or Queen of Flow'rs refuse the Cactus claim'd
For ruggedness and splendour?

The shadows fall: so, quickly as we may,
We touch for Herrick, never sad or cold,
This Meadowsweet that borders fields of hay;
For Chapman, Marygold:

The flaming Peony with Marlowe mate;
The Rhododendron give to Dryden's charge;
To Ben the Dahlia, burly-elaborate,
Iris to holy George.

Lavender, Quarles; Sweet-William's honest face,
Marvel; John Fletcher must Convolvulus get;
Pope the Camellia, nursed for lamplight grace;
Goldsmith the Mignonette.

The dark sward's spirts of early Crocus-flame,
Purpure, and Or, and Argent, do thou take,
Boy Chatterton; and ‘crown'd with a golden dream,’
This angel Lily, Blake.

Elliott's, a Foxglove from the Yorkshire fells;
This double Cowslip must be Cowper's right;
Hemans's Gillyflower; and L. E. L.'s,
Anemone, the white.

Rich Pansy, gravely ‘freakt,’ to Wordsworth goes;
To Byron, Sunflower; Moore, the gay Sweet-Pea,
Flower-butterfly; where Southey's blazon grows
In Garden Poppy see.

Give Hogg the Wild Thyme from a fairy knowe;
And Ramsay, Broom; and Allan Cunningham
Scotch Whin; and Clare the Buttercup. Allow
For Daisy, Bloomfield's claim.

May Landor not disdain thee, Asphodel!
Ah, Edgar Poe, the Dwale, the Dwale's thine own.
Methinks the wholesome Heather suits thee well,
Brave Irish Ferguson.

Campbell, the choice Auricula is thine,
Cultured, compact; the Hollyhock's firm pride
Macaulay's; Double Rocket, hearty and fine,
For Clough we lay aside.

Light melts from heav'n. Our curfew be the same
As folds the latest of these happy clans.
New bridals may another day proclaim,
And none forbid the banns!