It is said that the flowers, as well as the birds,

Have a language peculiar, with phrases and words;

And that oft, in the hush of a warm summer day,

You may hear, if you listen, whatever they say.

I have doubted till lately, and thought it was all

The whim of some dreamer, whom poet they call;

But since the sweet seventh of June, fifty-one,

My doubts have all vanished, like mists in the sun.

As I walked in the garden I saw a sweet rose,

Such as seldom on this side of Paradise grows,

With a deep, deepening blush overspreading its cheek,

Leaning down to a lily, as if it would speak.

Behind a tall orange in bloom, as it spread

Its rich fragrant shadow all over the bed,

Unperceived by the parties, I paused in my walk

And, in truth, overheard an intelligent talk.

First, a low, distant murmur arrested my ear,

Like the memory of tones which in dreaming we hear;

Then, clear and distinct, though subtile as thought,

Their simple, articulate language I caught.

“Thou fairest of gems,” said the rose, bending down,

“Too sweet for the earth and too chaste for a crown,

I would thou wert taller, that here, in my place,

The world might appreciate thy sweetness and grace.”

“Nay, nay, lovely rose,” the fair lily replied,

“It is safer in humble retirement to hide;

Earth’s praises I court not; my graces were given

To exhale, in their careless redundance, to heaven.”

As the rest of their talk was of love, and as I

Was acting the part of an eaves-dropping spy,

I will not report it; but this I have told,

As conveying a lesson for young and for old.

Blow, blow, ye winds, from the wide blue sea!

Oh, cool the heat of this fevered brow,

And still this heart with such melody

As your fluttering wings are wafting now!

Bear on, bear on, from that distant shore,

The loving tones of a household band

Whose cherished, forms I see no more,

Ye voices dim from my fatherland!

Such sad, sweet thoughts to me ye bring

Of my own far home with its ivied walls,

Of the vine-wreathed porch, where the zephyr sings

Through the rustling leaves, and the sunbeam falls—

Of the threshold stone, and the open door,

Of the kindred forms that gathered there,

At the stilly eve full hearts to pour,

In a gush of song on the listening air—

Of the noisy flow of the little brook,

Whose mossy banks our footsteps haunted;

Of winds which half their sweetness took

From fragrant bowers our hands had planted.

Fleta Forrester.