TO THE BLUE ANEMONE.
Flower of starry clearness bright!
Quivering urn of colour’d light!
Hast thou drawn thy cup’s rich dye
From the intenseness of the sky?
From a long, long fervent gaze
Through the year’s first golden days,
Up that blue and silent deep,
Where, like things of sculptured sleep,
Alabaster clouds repose,
With the sunshine on their snows?
Thither was thy heart’s love turning,
Like a censer ever burning,
Till the purple heavens in thee
Set their smile, Anemone?
Or can those warm tints be caught
Each from some quick glow of thought?
So much of bright soul there seems
In thy bendings and thy gleams,
So much thy sweet life resembles
That which feels, and weeps, and trembles,
I could deem thee spirit-fill’d,
As a reed by music thrill’d,
When thy being I behold
To each loving breath unfold,
Or, like woman’s willowy form,
Shrink before the gathering storm!
I could ask a voice from thee,
Delicate Anemone!
Flower! thou seem’st not born to die
With thy radiant purity,
But to melt in air away,
Mingling with the soft Spring-day,
When the crystal heavens are still,
And faint azure veils each hill,
And the lime-leaf doth not move,
Save to songs that stir the grove,
And earth all glorified is seen,
As imaged in some lake serene;
—Then thy vanishing should be,
Pure and meek Anemone!
Flower! the laurel still may shed
Brightness round the victor’s head;
And the rose in beauty’s hair
Still its festal glory wear;
And the willow-leaves drop o’er
Brows which love sustains no more:
But by living rays refined,
Thou, the trembler of the wind,
Thou the spiritual flower,
Sentient of each breeze and shower,
Thou, rejoicing in the skies,
And transpierced with all their dyes;
Breathing vase, with light o’erflowing,
Gem-like to thy centre glowing,
Thou the poet’s type shalt be,
Flower of soul, Anemone!