With a slow and noiseless footstep, Takes the vacant chair beside me, And she sits and gazes at me, With those deep and tender eyes, Like the stars, so still and saint-like, Looking downward from the skies. Uttered not, yet comprehended, O, though oft depressed and lonely, All my fears are laid aside, If I but remember only Such as these have lived and died! FLOWERS. SPAKE full well, in language quaint and olden, One who dwelleth by the castled Rhine, When he called the flowers so blue and golden, Stars, that in earth's firmament do shine. Stars they are, wherein we read our history, Yet not wrapped about with awful mystery, Wondrous truths, and manifold as wondrous, Bright and glorious is that revelation, Making evident our own creation, In these stars of earth, these golden flowers. And the Poet, faithful and far-seeing, Sees alike in stars and flowers, a part Of the self-same, universal being, Which is throbbing in his brain and heart. Gorgeous flowerets in the sunlight shining, Brilliant hopes, all woven in gorgeous tissues, Flaunting gaily in the golden light; Large desires, with most uncertain issues, These in flowers and men are more than seeming; Workings are they of the self-same powers, Which the poet, in no idle dreaming, Seeth in himself and in the flowers. Everywhere about us are they glowing, Not alone in Spring's armorial bearing, But in arms of brave old Autumn's wearing, Not alone in meadows and green alleys, On the mountain-top, and by the brink Not alone in her vast dome of glory, In the cottage of the rudest peasant, In ancestral homes, whose crumbling towers, Speaking of the Past unto the Present, Tell us of the ancient Games of Flowers; In all places, then, and in all seasons, Flowers expand their light and soul-like wings, Teaching us, by most persuasive reasons, How akin they are to human things. |