WHO hung thy beauty on such rugged stalk, Thou glorious flower? Who pour'd 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 green-house 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? 'Twould 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 beauties fade. -- Still must I bear away within my heart Thy lesson of our own mortality, The fearful withering of each blossom'd 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. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...TO MARY CHURCH TERRELL - LECTURER by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON MARRIAGE A-LA-MODE: SONG by JOHN DRYDEN MANNERLY MARGERY, MILK AND ALE by JOHN SKELTON IN SICKNESS (1714) by JONATHAN SWIFT ENGLAND AND HER COLONIES [OR, DOMINIONS] by WILLIAM WATSON |