BOOKS AND FLOWERS.
“La vue d’une fleur caresse mon imagination, et flatte mes sens a un point inexprimable. Sous le tranquille abri du toit paternel j’etais nourrie des l’enfance avec des fleurs et des livres; dans l’etroite enceinte d’une prison, au milieu des fers imposies par la tyrannie, j’oublie l’injustice des hommes, leurs sottises et mes maux, avec des livres et des fleurs.”
Come! let me make a sunny realm around thee
Of thought and beauty! Here are books and flowers,
With spells to loose the fetter which hath bound thee
The ravel’d coil of this world’s feverish hours.
The soul of song is in these deathless pages,
Even as the odour in the flower enshrined;
Here the crown’d spirits of departed ages
Have left the silent melodies of mind.
Their thoughts, that strove with time, and change, and anguish,
For some high place where faith her wing might rest,
Are burning here—a flame that may not languish—
Still pointing upward to that bright hill’s crest!
Their grief, the veil’d infinity exploring
For treasures lost, is here;—their boundless love,
Its mighty streams of gentleness outpouring
On all things round, and clasping all above.
And the bright beings, their own heart’s creations,
Bright, yet all human, here are breathing still;
Conflicts, and agonies, and exultations
Are here, and victories of prevailing will!
Listen! oh, listen! let their high words cheer thee!
Their swan-like music ringing through all woes;
Let my voice bring their holy influence near thee—
The Elysian air of their divine repose!
Or would’st thou turn to earth? Not earth all furrow’d
By the old traces of man’s toil and care,
But the green peaceful world that never sorrow’d,
The world of leaves, and dews, and summer air!
Look on these flowers! as o’er an altar shedding,
O’er Milton’s page, soft light from colour’d urns!
They are the links, man’s heart to nature wedding,
When to her breast the prodigal returns.
They are from lone wild places, forest dingles,
Fresh banks of many a low-voiced hidden stream,
Where the sweet star of eve looks down and mingles
Faint lustre with the water-lily’s gleam.
They are from where the soft winds play in gladness,
Covering the turf with flowery blossom-showers;
—Too richly dower’d, O friend! are we for sadness—
Look on an empire—mind and nature—ours!
[“The ‘brightly associated hours’ she passed with Mrs Lawrence, have been alluded to by Mrs Hemans, in the dedication to the ‘National Lyrics,’ and recorded by ‘her friend, and the sister of her friend, Colonel D’Aguilar,’ in her own affectionate ‘Recollections.’ The ‘Books and Flowers’ of Wavertree Hall were ever fondly identified with their dear mistress; and, years after the enjoyment of them had passed away from all senses but memory, she who was then herself, too, ‘passing away,’ thus tenderly alluded to them from her sick couch at Redesdale:—‘When I write to you, my imagination always brightens, and pleasant thoughts of lovely flowers, and dear old books, and strains of antique Italian melody, come floating over me, as Bacon says the rich scents go ‘to and fro like music in the air.’”]