As o’er these rhymes you glance your curious eyes.
But is it strange, if in an idle hour,
I cull these blossoms from the Muses’ bower?
Frail though they be, and blown but for a day,
The heart’s best language they may best convey;
In climes more genial, more adorned than ours,
The poet and the lover talk with flowers;
Then, though some richer gift were mine, to send,
This should be thine, my old familiar friend.
If for a while it cheat thee of a care,