“Who shall say that flowers

Dress not Heaven’s own bowers?

Who its love, without them, can fancy—or sweet floor?

Who shall even dare

To say we sprang not there,

And came not down that Love might bring one piece of heav’n the more?

Oh, pray believe that angels

From those blue Dominions

Brought us in their white laps down, ’twixt their golden pinions.”

No poet of this—or many a generation past—has said a sweeter or more haunting word for the flowers.