Hold one of us lightly,-
See from what a slender

Stalk we bow'r in heavy blooms,
And roundness rich and tender :

Know you not our only

Rival flow'r,-the human? Loveliest weight on lightest foot, Joy-abundant woman?

LILIES.

WE are lilies fair,

The flower of virgin light; Nature held us forth, and said, "Lo! my thoughts of white."

Ever since then, angels

Hold us in their hands;

You may see them where they take
In pictures their sweet stands.

Like the garden's angels

Also do we seem ;

And not the less for being crown'd

With a golden dream.

Could you see around us

The enamour'd air,

You would see it pale with bliss
To hold a thing so fair.

POPPIES.

We are slumberous poppies,
Lords of Lethe downs,
Some awake, and some asleep,

Sleeping in our crowns.

What perchance our dreams may know,

Let our serious beauty show.

Central depth of purple,

Leaves more bright than rose,

Who shall tell what brightest thought

Out of darkest grows?

Who, through what funereal pain,

Visions aye are on us,
Unto eyes of power;
Pluto's alway-setting sun,

And Proserpine's bower :

There, like bees, the pale souls come
For our drink, with drowsy hum.

Taste, ye mortals, also;

Milky-hearted, we;—

Taste, but with a reverent care;
Active-patient be.

Too much gladness brings to gloom
Those who on the gods presume.

CHORUS.

WE are the sweet flowers,

Born of sunny showers,

(Think, whene'er you see us, what our beauty saith ;) Utterance, mute and bright,

Of some unknown delight,

We fill the air with pleasure, by our simple breath:
All who see us love us,-

We befit all places :

Unto sorrow we give smiles, and unto graces, graces.

Mark our ways, how noiseless

All, and sweetly voiceless,

Though the March-winds pipe, to make our passage clear; Not a whisper tells

Where our small seed dwells,

Nor is known the moment green, when our tips appear.
We thread the earth in silence,

In silence build our bowers,

And leaf by leaf in silence show, till we laugh a-top, sweet flowers.

The dear lumpish baby,

Humming with the May-bee,

Hails us with his bright stare, stumbling through the grass; The honey-dropping moon,

On a night in June,

Kisses our pale pathway leaves, that felt the bridegroom pass. Age, the wither'd clinger,

And wraps

On us mutely gazes,

the thought of his last bed in his childhood's daisies.

See (and scorn all duller
Taste) how heav'n loves colour;

How great Nature, clearly, joys in red and green ;-
What sweet thoughts she thinks
Of violets and pinks,

And a thousand flushing hues, made solely to be seen:
See her whitest lilies

Chill the silver showers,

And what a red mouth is her rose, the woman of the flowers.

Uselessness divinest,

Of a use the finest,

Painteth us, the teachers of the end of use;
Travellers, weary eyed,
Bless us, far and wide;

Unto sick and prison'd thoughts we give sudden truce:
Not a poor town window

Loves its sickliest planting,

But its wall speaks loftier truth than Babylonian vaunting.

Sagest yet the uses,

Mix'd with our sweet juices,

Whether man, or May-fly, profit of the balm;
As fair fingers heal'd

Knights from the olden field,

We hold cups of mightiest force to give the wildest calm.
Ev'n the terror, poison,

Hath its plea for blooming;

Life it gives to reverent lips, though death to the presuming.

And oh! our sweet soul-taker,

That thief, the honey maker,

What a house hath he, by the thymy glen!
In his talking rooms
How the feasting fumes,

Till the gold cups overflow to the mouths of men!
The butterflies come aping

Those fine thieves of ours,

And flutter round our rifled tops, like tickled flowers with flowers.

See those tops, how beauteous!

What fair service duteous

Elfin court 'twould seem;

And taught, perchance, that dream

Which the old Greek mountain dreamt, upon nights divine. To expound such wonder

Human speech avails not;

Yet there dies no poorest weed, that such a glory exhales not.

Think of all these treasures,
Matchless works and pleasures,

Every one a marvel, more than thought can say ;
Then think in what bright show'rs

We thicken fields and bow'rs,

And with what heaps of sweetness half stifle wanton May: Think of the mossy forests

By the bee-birds haunted,

And all those Amazonian plains, lone lying as enchanted.

Trees themselves are ours;
Fruits are born of flowers;

Peach, and roughest nut, were blossoms in the spring:
The lusty bee knows well

The news, and comes pell-mell,

And dances in the bloomy thicks with darksome antheming. Beneath the very burthen

Of planet-pressing ocean,

—a thought for meek

We wash our smiling cheeks in peace,

devotion.

Tears of Phoebus,-missings
Of Cytherea's kissings,

Have in us been found, and wise men find them still;
Drooping grace unfurls

Still Hyacinthus' curls,

And Narcissus loves himself in the selfish rill:
Thy red lip, Adonis,

Still is wet with morning;

And the step, that bled for thee, the rosy briar adorning.

Oh! true things are fables,

Fit for sagest tables,

And the flow'rs are true things,—yet no fables they;
Fables were not more

Bright, nor loved of yore,

Yet they grew not, like the flow'rs, by every old pathway:

Grossest hand can test us;

Fools may prize us never;—

Yet we rise, and rise, and rise,-marvels sweet for ever.

Who shall say, that flowers

Dress not heaven's own bowers?

Who its love, without us, can fancy,

Who shall even dare

or sweet floor?

To say, we sprang not there,—

And came not down that Love might bring one piece of heav'n the more?

Oh! pray believe that angels

From those blue dominions,

Brought us in their white laps down, 'twixt their golden pinions.

TO A CHILD, DURING SICKNESS.

SLEEP breathes at last from out thee,

My little, patient boy;

And balmy rest about thee

Smooths off the day's annoy.

I sit me down, and think

Of all thy winning ways;

Yet almost wish, with sudden shrink,
That I had less to praise.

Thy sidelong pillow'd meekness,
Thy thanks to all that aid,
Thy heart, in pain and weakness,
Of fancied faults afraid;

The little trembling hand

That wipes thy quiet tears,-
These, these are things that

Dread memories for years.

may

Sorrows I've had, severe ones

I will not think of now;
And calmly midst my dear ones,
Have wasted with dry brow:
But when thy fingers press,
And pat my stooping head,
I cannot bear the gentleness,-

demand