Classic Poem

Ye have a kind voice, sweet flowers!
Of pure angelic tone;
It has no echo in greenwood bowers,
But speaks to the heart alone.

Ye have looked on the blush of day,
And stolen its rosy hue;
But the fountain and song-bird's lay
Are silent, alas! to you.

No clambering vines caress
Your artless forms so fair;
Your velvet leaves are motionless,
For beauty is sleeping there.

And the flower-spirit hovers near,
And bears on its dove-like wing,
A gem that was once a pearly tear
On the infant cheek of spring.

Ye have a sad voice, sweet flowers!
That whispers of quick decay;
The garlands worn in happiest hours
Are the soonest to pass away.

I know that the frost of death
Ere long will silently chill;
But the fragrance exhaling now
Will linger around me still.

And thus doth a smile, the last
By the lips of a fond friend given,
A fragrance shed though that friend hath passed
To his home in the starry heaven.