Fading Flowers

'O pale and drooping flowers! Ye that so brightly meet the morning's eye! Is there no sorrow in your native bowers That thus ye die?

'Are there not folded wings On the green boughs?—a silence and a gloom Amidst the leaves and all the breathing things That loved your bloom?

'No! the rejoicing bee There woos the violets, as at early dawn; And o'er the elastic sod, in tameless glee, Still bounds the fawn.

'And the rich bank ye crown'd, By the wood's fount, yet hears a thousand songs Float through the branches, trembling far around With happy throngs.

'Wherefore, to us alone Of all that walk the warm and laughing earth, Bring ye sad thoughts of Hope and Beauty gone, And vanished Mirth?

'Why must your fading bells, With the faint sweetness of your parting breath, Remind us but of sorrowful farewells, Decay and Death?

'Surely, it is to teach Our hearts, by converse with their changeful lot, That, 'midst the glories which the blight can reach, Our Home is not.'