Oh! thou who dry’st the mourner’s tear,
How dark this world would be,
If, when deceived and wounded here,
We could not fly to thee!
The friends who in our sunshine live,
When winter comes, are flown;
And he who has but tears to give,
Must weep those tears alone:
But thou wilt heal that broken heart,
Which, like the plants that throw
Their fragrance from the wounded part,
Breathes sweetness out of wo.
Moore.
Then bright from earth, amid the troubled sky,
Ascends fair Colchicum, with radiant eye,
Warms the cold bosom of the hoary year,
And lights with beauty’s blaze the dusky sphere.
Darwin.
The world around me groweth gray and old:
My friends are dropping one by one away;
Some live in distant lands—some in the clay
Rest quietly, their mortal moments told.
And when my children gather at my knee
To worship God and sing our morning psalm,
Their rising stature whispers unto me
My life is waning towards its evening calm.
China Aster.... Variety.
The China Aster begins to blow when other flowers are scarce. It is like an afterthought of Flora’s, who smiles at leaving us. The China Aster was introduced into Europe by Father d’Insarville, a Jesuit missionary; who, about the year 1730, sent seeds of it to the royal gardens of Paris. As, by cultivation, many varieties of the Aster have been obtained, the flower has been made the emblem of variety.
The sleepless streams move onward
Through beds of idling lilies,
Chiding the foolish flowers
That watch their mirrored beauty;
So live the thoughtless many,
Who throng the halls of fashion.