Flora's Interpreter, and Fortuna Flora

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Benjamin B. Mussey, 1849 - Flower language - 288 pages

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Page 183 - Go, lovely Rose ! Tell her, that wastes her time and me, That now she knows, When I resemble her to thee, How sweet and fair she seems to be. Tell her that's young And shuns to have her graces spied, That hadst thou sprung In deserts, where no men abide, Thou must have uncommended died. Small is the worth Of beauty from the light retired: Bid her come forth, Suffer herself to be desired, And not blush so to be admired.
Page 251 - Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers, that lately sprang and stood In brighter light and softer airs, a beauteous sisterhood ? Alas! they all are in their graves; the gentle race of flowers Are lying in their lowly beds with the fair and good of ours. The rain is falling where they lie; but the cold November rain Calls not from out the gloomy earth the lovely ones again.
Page 96 - Of her bright face one glance will trace A picture on the brain, And of her voice in echoing hearts A sound must long remain; But memory, such as mine of her, So very much endears, When death is nigh, my latest sigh Will not be life's but hers. I fill this cup to one made up Of loveliness alone, A woman, of her gentle sex The seeming paragon— Her health! and would on earth there stood, Some more of such a frame, That life might be all poetry, And weariness a name.
Page 251 - And now, when comes the calm mild day, as still such days will come, To call the squirrel and the bee from out their winter home ; When the sound of dropping nuts is heard, though all the trees are still, And twinkle in the smoky light the waters of the rill, The south wind searches for the flowers whose fragrance late he bore, And sighs to find them in the wood and by the stream no more.
Page 235 - Thou waitest late and com'st alone, When woods are bare and birds are flown, And frosts and shortening days portend The aged year is near his end. Then doth thy sweet and quiet eye Look through its fringes to the sky, Blue — blue — as if that sky let fall A flower from its cerulean wall.
Page 235 - GENTIAN. THOU blossom bright with autumn dew, And colored with the heaven's own blue, That openest when the quiet light Succeeds the keen and frosty night. Thou comest not when violets lean O'er wandering brooks and springs unseen, Or columbines, in purple dressed, Nod o'er the ground-bird's hidden nest. Thou waitest late and com'st alone, When woods are bare and birds are flown, And frosts and shortening days portend The aged year is near his end.
Page 17 - Celestial voices Hymn it unto our souls : according harps, By angel fingers touched when the mild stars Of morning sang together, sound forth still The song of our great immortality...
Page 159 - Or like the borealis race, That flit ere you can point their place; Or like the rainbow's lovely form Evanishing amid the storm. Nae man can tether time or tide; The hour approaches Tarn maun ride — That hour o...
Page 157 - OH, fairest of the rural maids ! Thy birth was in the forest shades ; Green boughs, and glimpses of the sky, Were all that met thine infant eye. Thy sports, thy wanderings, when a child, Were ever in the sylvan wild ; And all the beauty of the place Is in thy heart and on thy face. The twilight of the trees and rocks Is in the light shade of thy locks ; Thy step is as the wind, that weaves Its playful way among the leaves.
Page 126 - LAMENT who will, in fruitless tears, The speed with which our moments fly ; I sigh not over vanished years, But watch the years that hasten by. Look, how they come, — a mingled crowd Of bright and dark, but rapid days ; Beneath them, like a summer cloud, The wide world changes as I gaze. What ! grieve that time has brought so soon The sober age of manhood on ! As idly might I weep, at noon, To see the blush of morning gone.

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