The Meeting of the Flowers.

BY D. F. M'CARTHY.

PROEM.

There is within this world of ours

Full many a happy home and hearth; What time, the Saviour's blessed birth, Makes glad the gloom of wintry hours.

When back from severed shore from shore,
And over seas that vainly part,

The scattered embers of the heart
Glow round the parent hearth once more.

When those, who now are anxious men,

Forget their growing years and cares;
Forget the time-flakes on their hairs,
And laugh light-hearted boys again.

When those who now are wedded wives,
By children of their own embraced,
Recall their early joys, and taste

Anew the childhood of their lives.

And the old people the good sire

And kindly parent-mother--glow

To feel their children's children throw Fresh warmth around the Christmas fire.

When in the sweet colloquial din,

Unheard the sullen sleet-winds shout; And though the winter rage without, The social summer reigns within.

THE FAMILY OF FLOWERS.

But in this wondrous world of ours

Are other circling kindred chords

Binding poor harmless beasts and birds,

And the fair family of flowers.

That family that meet to day

From many a foreign field and glenFor what is Christmas time with men Is with the flowers the month of May.

Back to the meadows of the West,

Back to their natal fields they come;
And as they reach their wished-for home,

THE MOTHER folds them to her breast.

And as she breathes, with balmy sighs,
A fervent blessing over them,
The tearful, glistening dews begem
The parents' and the children's eyes.
She spreads a carpet for their feet,

And mossy pillows for their heads,
And curtains-round their fairy beds
With blossom-broidered branches sweet:

Had sat upon a mossy ledge

O'er Baiæ in the morning's beams,
Or where the sulphurous crater steams
Had hung suspended from the edge.

Or following its devious course

Up many a weary winding mile,
Had tracked the long, mysterious Nile
Even to its now no-fabled source:

Resting, perchance, as on he strode,
To see the herded camels pass
Upon the strips of way-side grass
That line with green the dust-white road.

Had often closed his weary lids

In green oases of the waste,

Or in the mighty shadows traced

By the eternal pyramids.

Had slept within an Arab's tent

Pitched for the night beneath a palm,
Or when was heard the vesper psalm
With the pale nun in worship bent:
Or on the moon-lit fields of France,
When happy village maidens trod
Lightly the fresh and verdurous sod,
There was he seen amid the dance:

Yielding with sympathising stem

To the quick feet that round him flew, Sprang from the ground as they would do, Or sank unto the earth with them:

Or, child-like, played with girl and boy,
By many a river's bank, and gave
His floating body to the wave

Full many a time to give them joy.

These and a thousand other tales

The traveller told, and welcome found;
These were the simple tales went round

The happy circles in the vales:

Keeping reserved with conscious pride,

His noblest act, his crowning feat,
How he had led even Humboldt's feet

Up Chimborazo's mighty side.

Guiding him through the trackless snow,
By sheltered clefts of living soil,
Sweet'ning the fearless traveller's toil,
With memories of the world below.

LILIES.

Such was the hardy Daisy's tale,

And then the maidens of the group-
Lilies, whose languid heads down droop

Over their pearl-white shoulders pale,

Told, when the genial glow of June

Had passed, they sought still warmer climes,
And took beneath the verdurous limes,

Their sweet siesta through the noon.

And seeking still, with fond pursuit,

The phantom Health, which lures and wiles
Its followers, to the shores and isles
Of amber waves, and golden fruit.

There they had seen the orange grove,
Enwreath its gold with buds of white,
As if themselves had taken flight,
And settled on the boughs above.

There kiss'd by every rosy mouth,

And press'd to every gentle breast,
These pallid daughters of the West,
Reign'd in the sunshine of the South.

And, thoughtful of the things divine,
Were oft by many an altar found,
Standing like white-rob'd angels round
The precincts of some sacred shrine.

VIOLETS.

And Violets with dark blue eyes,

Told how they spent the winter time,
In Andalusia's Eden clime,

Or 'neath Italia's kindred skies.

Chiefly when evening's golden gloom,
Veil'd Rome's serenest ether soft,
Bending in thoughtful musings oft,
Above the lost Alastor's tomb*-

Or the twin-poet's; he who sings

"A thing of beauty never dies,"t Paying them back in fragrant sighs, The love they bore all loveliest things.

THE WALL-FLOWER.

The flower, whose bronzed cheek recalls
The incessant beat of wind and sun,
Spoke of the lore his search had won

Upon Pompeii's rescued walls.

How, in his antiquarian march,

He crossed the tomb-strown plain of Rome,
Sat on some prostrate plinth, or clomb

The Coliseum's topmost arch.

And thence beheld, in glad amaze,
What Nero's guilty eyes, aloof,

Drank in, from off his golden roof

The sun-bright city all ablaze:

Ablaze by day with solar fires

Ablaze by night, with lunar beams,
With lambent lustre on its streams,

And golden glories round its spires!

-

Shelley, speaking of the place in Rome where he himself is buried, says "The cemetery is an open space among the ruins, covered in winter with violets and daisies. It might make one in love with death, to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place."Preface to Adonais.

Keats, who is also buried in the same cemetery. The allusion is to the well-known line with which Endymion commences—

"A thing of beauty is a joy for ever."

Thence he beheld that wondrous dome
That, rising o'er the radiant town,
Circles, with Art's eternal crown,
The still imperial brow of Rome.

THE MARYGOLD.

Nor was the Marygold remiss,

But told how, in her crown of gold
She sat, like Persia's King of old,

High o'er the shores of Salamis.

And saw, against the morning sky,

The white-sailed fleets their wings display;
And, ere the tranquil close of day,

Fade, like the Persian's, from her eye.

Fleets, with their white flags all unfurled,

Inscribed with "Commerce," and with "Peace,"
Bearing no threatened ill to Greece,

But mutual good to all the world.

FIELD-FLOWERS AND TULIPS.

And various other flowers were seen,
Cowslip and Oxlip, and the tall
Tulip, whose grateful hearts recall
The winter homes where they had been.

Some in the sunny vales, beneath

The sheltering hills; and some, whose eyes
Were gladdened by the southern skies,

High up amid the blooming heath

PANSIES.

Meek, modest flowers, by poets loved,

Sweet Pansies, with their dark eyes fringed
With silken lashes finely tinged,

That trembled if a leaf but moved:

HOTHOUSE PLANTS.

And some in gardens, where the grass

Mossed o'er the green quadrangle's breast,
There dwelt each flower, a welcome guest,

In crystal palaces of glass:

Shown as a beauteous wonder there,

By beauty's hands to beauty's eyes,
Breathing what mimic art supplies,

The genial glow of summer air.

THE ABSENT.

Nor were the absent ones forgot,

Those whom a thousand cares detained,
Those whom the links of duty chained

Awhile from this their natal spot.

THE FLAX.

One, who in labour's useful tracks
Is proudly eminent, who roams
The providence of humble homes-
The blue-eyed, fair-haired, friendly Flax: