Voice of Flowers/The Early Frost
THE EARLY FROST.
My flowers,—my few and precious flowers, what evil hath been here?
Came the fierce Frost-King forth last night, so secret and severe?
I saw you last with diamond dew fresh on each beauteous head,
And little deem'd to find ye thus, all desolate and dead.
White Poppy, tall and full of pride, whose petals' feathery grace
With fully rounded orb has decked my simple parlor vase;
Thy oozing buds disclose the gum, that swells Hygeia's store,
But the sleep of death is on thee now, thy magic spell is o'er.
Alas, my brave Crysanthemum, how crisp thou art, and sere;
Thou wert, perchance, too lightly prized, when gaudier friends were near;
Yet, like a hero didst thou rise, to meet the spoiler's dart,
And battle, till the pure life-blood ran curdling round thy heart.
My poor Sweet-Pea, my constant friend, whene'er I sought in vain
To twine a full bouquet for one who pressed the couch of pain;
Or when my garden sometimes failed my mantel-piece to dress,
Thou always gav'st a hoarded gem, to help me in distress.
But thou, dear lonely Pansy, thus smiling in my path,
I marvel much how thou hast scap'd the tyrant's deadly wrath;
Didst thou hide beneath thy neighbor's robe, so flaunting and so fine,
To bid one sad good-morning more, and press thy lips to mine?
Good bye, my pretty flowering Bean, that with a right good will,
O'er casement, arch and trellis went climbing, climbing still,
Till the stern destroyer marked thee, and in his bitter ire,
Quenched out thy many scarlet spikes that glowed like living fire.
Pale, pale Snowberry, all is gone; I would it were not so,
Methinks the Woodbine near thee hath felt a lighter woe;
Lean, lean upon her sheltering arm, thy latest pang to take,
And yield to autumn's stormy will, till happier seasons wake.
Coarse Marigold, in days of yore, I scorned thy tawny face,
But since my plants are frail and few, I've gave thee welcome place.
And thou, tall London-pride! my son from weeds preserved thy stem,
And, for his sake, I sigh to see thy fallen diadem.
I have no costly Dahlias, nor greenhouse flowers to weep,
But I passed the rich man's garden, and the mourning there was deep,
For the crownless queens, all drooping, hung amid the wasted sod,
Like Boadicea, bent with shame, beneath the Roman rod.
'Tis hard to say farewell, my plants, 'tis hard to say farewell;
The florist might despise ye, yet your worth I cannot tell;
For at rising sun, or even-tide, in sorrow or in glee,
Your fragrant lips have ever op'd, to speak good words to me.
Most dear ye were to him who died, when summer round ye play'd,
That good old man, who looked with love on all that God had made;
Who, when his first familiar friends sank down in dreamless rest,
Took nature's green and living things more closely to his breast.
My blessed sire, we bore his chair at early summer morn,
That he might sit among your bowers and see your blossoms born;
While meek and placid smiles around his reverend features played,
The language of that better land, where ye no more shall fade.
Shall I see you, once again, sweet flowers, when Spring returneth fair,
To strew her breathing incense upon the balmy air?
Will you lift to me your infant heads? For me with fragrance swell?
Alas! why should I ask you thus, what is not yours to tell.
I know, full well, before your buds shall hail the vernal sky,
That many a younger, brighter brow, beneath the clods must lie;
And if my pillow should be there, still come in beauty free,
And show my little ones the love that you have borne to me.
Yea, come in all your glorious pomp, ambassadors, to show
The truth of those eternal words that on God's pages glow,
The bursting of the icy tomb, the rising of the just
In robes of beauty and of light, all stainless from the dust.
