Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE FRIENDSHIP-FLOWER, by RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE FRIENDSHIP-FLOWER, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: When first the friendship-flower is planted
Last Line: But leave the blossoms where they died.
Alternate Author Name(s): Houghton, 1st Baron; Houghton, Lord
Subject(s): Flowers; Friendship


WHEN first the Friendship-flower is planted
Within the garden of your soul,
Little of care or thought is wanted
To guard its beauty fresh and whole;
But when the full empassioned age
Has well revealed the magic bloom,
A wise and holy tutelage
Alone avoids the open tomb.

It is not Absence you should dread, --
For absence is the very air
In which, if sound at root, the head
Shall wave most wonderful and fair:
With sympathies of joy and sorrow
Fed, as with morn and even dews,
Ideal colouring it may borrow
Richer than ever earthly hues.

But oft the plant, whose leaves unsere
Refresh the desert, hardly brooks
The common-peopled atmosphere
Of daily thoughts and words and looks;
It trembles at the brushing wings
Of many a careless fashion-fly,
And strange suspicions aim their stings
To taint it as they wanton by.

Rare is the heart to bear a flower,
That must not wholly fall and fade,
Where alien feelings, hour by hour,
Spring up, beset, and overshade;
Better, a child of care and toil,
To glorify some needy spot,
Than in a glad redundant soil
To pine neglected and forgot.

Yet when, at last, by human slight,
Or close of their permitted day,
From the bright world of life and light
Such fine creations lapse away, --
Bury the relics that retain
Sick odours of departed pride, --
Hoard, as ye will, your memory's gain,
But leave the blossoms where they died.





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