The primrose has gone ere the Summer’s bright beam
Had enlivened the glade, or illumin’d the stream;
It died ere a bud of the forest was seen,
Or Spring had appeared in her tresses of green.
It bloom’d in simplicity’s meekest of form,
The spoil of the winds and the gust of the storm;
Like the offspring of want on a pitiless shore,
No hand to upraise it—no heart to deplore!
It knew not the fostering smiles of a friend,
Or the dew-drops of pity on sorrow that ’tend;