Voice of Flowers/The Cactus Speciosissimus
THE CACTUS SPECIOSISSIMUS.
Who hung thy beauty on such ragged stalk,
Thou glorious flower?
Who poured the richest hues,
In varying radiance, o'er thine ample brow,
And, like a mesh, those tissued stamens laid
Upon thy crimson lip?
Thou glorious flower!
Methinks it were no sin to worship thee,
Such passport hast thou from thy Maker's hand,
To thrill the soul. Lone, on thy leafless stem,
Thou bidd'st the queenly rose, with all her buds,
Do homage, and the greenhouse peerage bow
Their rainbow coronets.
Hast thou no thought?
No intellectual life? thou who can'st wake
Man's heart to such communings? no sweet word
With which to answer him? 'T would almost seem
That so much beauty needs must have a soul,
And that such form as tints the gazer's dream,
Held higher spirit than the common clod
On which we tread.
Yet while we muse, a blight
Steals o'er thee, and thy shrinking bosom shows
The mournful symptoms of a wan disease.—
I will not stay to see thy beauty fade.
Still must I bear away within my heart
Thy lesson of our own mortality;
The fearful withering of each blossomed bough
On which we lean, of every bud we fain
Would hide within our bosoms from the touch
Of the destroyer.
So instruct us, Lord!
Thou Father of the sunbeam and the soul,
Even by the simple sermon of a flower,
To cling to Thee.