33
In milk-white garb; and these are maiden thoughts.
Then, "purpled with Loves wound," they're pencilled o'er
With richer beauty; and fantastic oft,
And fleeting, too, are these love-marks, I ween.
Some prank them bravely out in courtier garb,
Trimming with gold their purple.[1] Some, methinks,
Their quiet humble-coloured heads bend down,
Like gentle, modest beings, doomed to bear
Much of earth's grief, subduing their young hearts
Into a holy calm. Others again,
With hues abruptly, almost harshly mixed,
Are like the meteor-minded sons of earth,
With whom wild genius dwells—brilliant and strange;—
In them e'en error oft times glorious shows.
Others, like hoarding misers, deep within
Hide a rich golden treasure, guarded round
With many a blackened line; and all the rest
Sombre and dusk appears;—they would not seem
To have such wealth, and so go dimly clad.
Oh! are not Pansies emblems meet for thoughts?
The pure, the chequer'd—gay and deep by turns;
A hue for every mood the bright things wear
In their soft velvet coats—
And let his name,
- ↑ Since writing these lines I have found that the name of the Pansy, thus described as a courtier, singularly coincides with my own fancy; it is the "George the Fourth."
f
