THE SHADOW OF A FLOWER.
“La voila telle que la mort nous l’a faite.”—Bossuet.
[“Never was a philosophical imagination more beautiful than that exquisite one of Kircher, Digby, and others, who discovered in the ashes of plants their primitive forms, which were again raised up by the power of heat. The ashes of roses, say they, will again revive in roses, unsubstantial and unodoriferous; they are not roses which grow on rose-trees, but their delicate apparitions, and, like apparitions, they are seen but for a moment.”—Curiosities of Literature.]
’Twas a dream of olden days
That Art, by some strange power,
The visionary form could raise
From the ashes of a flower.
That a shadow of the rose,
By its own meek beauty bow’d,
Might slowly, leaf by leaf, unclose,
Like pictures in a cloud.
Or the hyacinth, to grace,
As a second rainbow, spring;
Of summer’s path a dreary trace,
A fair, yet mournful thing!
For the glory of the bloom
That a flush around it shed,
And the soul within, the rich perfume,
Where were they? Fled, all fled!
Naught but the dim, faint line
To speak of vanish’d hours.—
Memory! what are joys of thine?
—Shadows of buried flowers!