Life went a Maying
With Nature, Hope, and Poesy,
When I was young!
Coleridge.
Ice-Plant.... Frigidity.
Canst thou no kindly ray impart,
Thou strangely beauteous one?
Fairer than fairest work of art,
Yet cold as sculptured stone!
Thou art in Friendship’s bright domain
A flower that yields no fruit;
And Love declares thy beauty vain;—
Of fragrance destitute!
With pellucid studs the Ice-Flower gems
His rimy foliage, and his candied stems.
Darwin.
As water fluid is, till it do grow
Solid and fixed by cold,
So in warm seasons love doth loosely flow;
Frost only can it hold;
Your coldness and disdain
Does the sweet course restrain.
Cowley.