The Book of Flowers

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Saunders and Otley, 1836 - Flowers in literature - 372 pages

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Page 360 - Alas! they all are in their graves; the gentle race of flowers Are lying in their lowly beds with the fair and good of ours. The rain is falling where they lie; but the cold November rain Calls not from out the gloomy earth the lovely ones again.
Page 360 - The melancholy days are come, The saddest of the year, Of wailing winds, and naked woods, And meadows brown and sere. Heaped in the hollows of the grove, The autumn leaves lie dead ; They rustle to the eddying gust, And to the rabbit's tread. The robin and the wren are flown, And from the shrubs the jay, And from the wood-top calls the crow, Through all the gloomy day.
Page 255 - Tell her that's young, And shuns to have her graces spied, That hadst thou sprung In deserts where no men abide, Thou must have uncommended died. Small is the worth Of beauty from the light retired ; Bid her come forth, Suffer herself to be desired, And not blush so to be admired. Then die, that she The common fate of all things rare May read in thee ; How small a part of time they share, That are so wondrous sweet and fair.
Page 361 - When the sound of dropping nuts is heard, though all the trees are still, And twinkle in the smoky light the waters of the rill, The south wind searches for the flowers whose fragrance late he bore, And sighs to find them in the wood and by the stream no more.
Page 5 - The eternal regions : lowly reverent Towards either throne they bow, and to the ground With solemn adoration down they cast Their crowns inwove with amarant and gold ; Immortal amarant, a flower which once In Paradise, fast by the tree of life, Began to bloom ; but soon for man's offence To heaven removed where first it grew, there grows, And flowers aloft shading the fount of life...
Page 336 - Thou waitest late and com'st alone, When woods are bare and birds are flown, And frosts and shortening days portend The aged year is near his end. Then doth thy sweet and quiet eye Look through its fringes to the sky, Blue — blue — as if that sky let fall A flower from its cerulean wall.
Page 336 - GENTIAN. THOU blossom bright with autumn dew, And colored with the heaven's own blue, That openest when the quiet light Succeeds the keen and frosty night. Thou comest not when violets lean O'er wandering brooks and springs unseen, Or columbines, in purple dressed, Nod o'er the ground-bird's hidden nest. Thou waitest late and com'st alone, When woods are bare and birds are flown, And frosts and shortening days portend The aged year is near his end.
Page 117 - And lovely passions, changing oft, So fill her, she appears The image of themselves by turns, The idol of past years...
Page 83 - I saw two clouds at morning, Tinged with the rising sun ; And in the dawn they floated on, And mingled into one: I thought that morning cloud was blest, It moved so sweetly to the west. I saw two summer currents...
Page 165 - LAMENT who will, in fruitless tears, The speed with which our moments fly ; I sigh not over vanished years, But watch the years that hasten by. Look, how they come, — a mingled crowd Of bright and dark, but rapid days ; Beneath them, like a summer cloud, The wide world changes as I gaze. What ! grieve that time has brought so soon The sober age of manhood on ! As idly might I weep, at noon, To see the blush of morning gone.

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