The Atlantic Monthly/Volume 2/Number 2/Myrtle Flowers

by Benjamin Franklin Presbury

 

Myrtle Flowers

Since Love within my heart made nest,
  With the fond trust of brooding bird,
  I find no all-embracing word
To say how deeply I am blest.

Though wintry clouds are in the air
  And the dead leaves unburied lie,
  Nor open is the violet's eye,
I see new beauty everywhere.

I walk beneath the naked trees,
  Where wild streams shiver as they pass,
  Yet in the sere and sighing grass
I hear a murmur as of bees,—

The bees that in love's morning rise
  From tender eyes and lips to drain,
  In ecstasies of blissful pain,
The sweets that bloomed in Paradise.

There twines a joy with every care
  That springs within this sacred ground;
  But, oh! to give what I have found
Doth thrill me with divine despair.

If distant, thou dost rise a star
  Whose beams are with my being wrought,
  And curvest all my teeming thought
With sweet attractions from afar.

As a winged ship, in calmest hour,
  Still moves upon the mighty sea
  To some deep ocean melody,
I feel thy spirit and thy power.