Classic Poem

The flowers were beautiful to me
When childhood lured the way
Along the green and sunny slope,
Or through the groves to stray.
They were to me as playmates dear,
And when upon my knee
I whisper'd to them in their beds,
Methought they answer'd me.

I bent to kiss them where they grew,
And smiling bore away
On lip and cheek the diamond dew
That glittering deck'd their spray.
The bud, on which no eye hath glanced,
Save His who form'd its pride,
Seem'd as a sister to my heart,
For it had none beside.

Then countless gay and fairy forms
Gleam'd by, on pinions rare,
And many a castle's turret bright
Was pictured on the air;
For Fancy held me so in thrall,
And peopled every scene,
That flowers might only fill the space
A thousand joys between.

But as life's river nears its goal,
And glittering bubbles break,
The love of flowers is like his grasp
Whom stronger props forsake,
Who, drifting toward some wintry clime,
Hangs o'er the vessel's side,
To snatch one faded wreath of hope
From out the whelming tide.

Like his, who on the isthmus stands
Whose ever-crumbling verge
Divides the weary race of time
From death's advancing surge,
And sees, to cheer its dreary strand,
Pale Memory's leaflets start,
And binds them as a blessed balm
To heal his lonely heart.