Classic and Contemporary Poetry
FLOWERS FOR THE HEART, by EBENEZER ELLIOTT Poet's Biography First Line: Flowers! Winter flowers! - the child is dead Last Line: The childless cannot speak! Alternate Author Name(s): Corn-law Rhymer; Elliot, Ebenezer Subject(s): Childlessness; Death - Children; Death - Babies | ||||||||
FLOWERS! winter flowers! -- the child is dead, The mother cannot speak: Oh softly couch his little head, Or Mary's heart will break! Amid those curls of flaxen hair This pale pink ribbon twine, And on the little bosom there Place this wan lock of mine. How like a form in cold white stone, The coffin'd infant lies! Look, mother, on thy little one! And tears will fill thine eyes. She cannot weep -- more faint she grows, More deadly pale and still: Flowers! oh, a flower! a winter rose, That tiny hand to fill. Go, search the fields! the lichen wet Bends o'er the unfailing well; Beneath the furrow lingers yet The scarlet pimpernel. Peeps not a snow-drop in the bower, Where never froze the spring? A daisy? Ah! bring childhood's flower! The half-blown daisy bring! Yes, lay the daisy's little head Beside the little cheek; Oh haste! the last of five is dead! The childless cannot speak! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE LOST CHILDREN by RANDALL JARRELL THE MOURNER by LOUISE MOREY BOWMAN MELANCHOLY; AN ODE by WILLIAM BROOME SISTERS IN ARMS by AUDRE LORDE A BOTANICAL TROPE by WILLIAM MEREDITH FOR MOHAMMED ZEID OF GAZA, AGE 15 by NAOMI SHIHAB NYE A POET'S EPITAPH by EBENEZER ELLIOTT |
|