Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, TO THE CACTUS SPECIOSISSIMUS, by LYDIA HUNTLEY SIGOURNEY


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

TO THE CACTUS SPECIOSISSIMUS, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Who hung thy beauty on such rugged stalk
Last Line: To cling to thee.
Subject(s): Cactus


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.





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