With a slow and noiseless footstep Comes that messenger divine, Takes the vacant chair beside me, And she sits and gazes at me Uttered not, yet comprehended, O, though oft depressed and lonely, All my fears are laid aside, If I but remember only Such as these have lived and died! FLOWERS. SPAKE full well, in language quaint and olden, One who dwelleth by the castled Rhine, When he called the flowers, so blue and golden, Stars, that in earth's firmament do shine. Stars they are, wherein we read our history, As astrologers and seers of eld; Yet not wrapped about with awful mystery, Like the burning stars, which they beheld. Wondrous truths, and manifold as wondrous, Bright and glorious is that revelation, Written all over this great world of ours; Making evident our own creation, In these stars of earth, these golden flowers. And the Poet, faithful and far-seeing, Sees, alike in stars and flowers, a part Of the selfsame, universal being Which is throbbing in his brain and heart. Gorgeous flowerets in the sunlight shining, Blossoms flaunting in the eye of day, Tremulous leaves, with soft and silver lining, Buds, that open only to decay;— Brilliant hopes, all woven in gorgeous tissues, Large desires, with most uncertain issues, These in flowers and men are more than seeming: Workings are they of the selfsame powers, Which the Poet, in no idle dreaming, Seeth in himself and in the flowers. Everywhere about us are they growing, Not alone in Spring's armorial bearing, But in arms of brave old Autumn's wearing, Not alone in meadows and green alleys, On the mountain-top, and by the brink Of sequestered pools in woodland valleys, Where the slaves of Nature stoop to drink; Not alone in her vast dome of glory, In the cottage of the rudest peasant, In ancestral homes, whose crumbling towers, Speaking of the Past unto the Present, Tell us of the ancient Games of Flowers; In all places, then, and in all seasons, Flowers expand their light and soul-like wings, Teaching us, by most persuasive reasons, How akin they are to human things. |