Unpitying frosts, and Autumn's power
Shall leave no vestige of this flower.

From morning suns and evening dews
At first thy little being came:
If nothing once, you nothing lose,
For when you die you are the same;
The space between, is but an hour,
The frail duration of a flower.

1786.

Philip Freneau.

TO THE FRINGED 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.

18

24

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.

12

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.

16

I would that thus, when I shall see
The hour of death draw near to me,
Hope, blossoming within my heart,
May look to heaven as I depart.

1832

William Cullen Bryant.

20

THE RHODORA

ON BEING ASKED, WHENCE IS THE FLOWER

In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes,
I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods,
Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook,
To please the desert and the sluggish brook.
The purple petals, fallen in the pool,
Made the black water with their beauty gay;
Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool,
And court the flower that cheapens his array.
Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why

10

This charm is wasted on the earth and sky,
Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing,
Then Beauty is its own excuse for being:
Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose!
I never thought to ask, I never knew:

But, in my simple ignorance, suppose

The self-same Power that brought me there

brought you.

1839.

Ralph Waldo Emerson.

TO THE DANDELION

DEAR common flower, that grow'st beside the

way,

Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold,
First pledge of blithesome May,

Which children pluck, and, full of pride uphold,
High-hearted buccaneers, o'erjoyed that they
An Eldorado in the grass have found,

Which not the rich earth's ample round May match in wealth, thou art more dear to me Than all the prouder summer-blooms may be. 9

Gold such as thine ne'er drew the Spanish prow
Through the primeval hush of Indian seas,
Nor wrinkled the lean brow

Of age, to rob the lover's heart of ease;

'T is the Spring's largess, which she scatters now

To rich and poor alike, with lavish hand,

Though most hearts never understand

To take it at God's value, but pass by

The offered wealth with unrewarded eye.

18

Thou art my tropics and mine Italy;
To look at thee unlocks a warmer clime;

The eyes thou givest me

Are in the heart, and heed not space or time: Not in mid June the golden-cuirassed bee

Feels a more Summer-like warm ravishment
In the white lily's breezy tent,

His fragrant Sybaris, than I, when first
From the dark green thy yellow circles burst. 27

Then think I of deep shadows in the grass,
Of meadows where in sun the cattle graze,
Where, as the breezes pass,

The gleaming rushes lean a thousand ways,
Of leaves that slumber in a cloudy mass,
Or whiten in the wind, of waters blue

That from the distance sparkle through
Some woodland gap, and of a sky above,
Where one white cloud like a stray lamb doth

move.

36

My childhood's earliest thoughts are linked with

thee;

The sight of thee calls back the robin's song,

Who, from the dark old tree

Beside the door, sang clearly all day long,

And I, secure in childish piety,

Listened as if I heard an angel sing

With news from Heaven, which he could bring

Fresh every day to my untainted ears

When birds and flowers and I were happy

peers.

How like a prodigal doth nature seem,
When thou, for all thy gold, so common art!
Thou teachest me to deem

More sacredly of every human heart,

45

Since each reflects in joy its scanty gleam
Of heaven, and could some wondrous secret
show,

Did we but pay the love we owe,

And with a child's undoubting wisdom look
On all these living pages of God's book.
1845.

James Russell Lowell.

54

THE DEATH OF THE FLOWERS

THE melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year,

Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and

meadows brown and sear.

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.

Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers, that lately sprang and stood

In brighter light and softer airs, a beauteous sisterhood?

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.