Leigh Hunt

We are the sweet flowers, Born of sunny showers; Think, whene’er you see us, what our beauty saith; Utterance, mute and bright, Of some unknown delight, We fill the air with pleasure by our simple breath. All who see us love us. We befit all places. Unto sorrow we give smiles, and unto graces, graces.

Mark our ways, how noiseless All, and sweetly voiceless, Though the March winds pipe to make our passage clear; Not a whisper tells Where our small seed dwells, Nor is known the moment green when our tips appear. We thread the earth in silence; In silence build our bowers; And leaf by leaf in silence show, till we laugh atop sweet flowers.

See and scorn all duller! Taste how Heaven loves color! How great Nature, clearly, joys in red and green! What sweet thoughts she thinks Of violets and pinks, And a thousand flashing hues made solely to be seen; See her whitest lilies Chill the silver showers; And what a red mouth has her rose, the woman of her flowers!

Uselessness divinest, Of a use the finest, Painteth us, the teachers of the end of use. Travelers, weary-eyed, Bless us far and wide; Unto sick and prisoned thoughts we give sudden truce. Not a poor town window Loves its sickliest planting, But its wall speaks loftier truth than Babylonian vaunting.

Sagest yet the uses Mixed with our sweet juices, Whether man or may-fly profits of the balm. As fairy fingers healed Knights of the olden field, We hold cups of mightiest force to give the wildest calm. E’en the terror, poison, Hath its plea for blooming; Life it gives to reverent lips, though death to the presuming.

And oh! our sweet soul-taker, That thief, the honey-maker, What a house hath he by the thymy glen! In his talking rooms How the feasting fumes, Till his gold-cups overflow to the mouths of men! The butterflies come aping Those fine thieves of ours, And flutter round our rifled tops like tickled flowers with flowers.

See those tops, how beauteous! What fair service duteous Round some idol waits, as on their lord the Nine? Elfin court ’twould seem, And taught, perchance, that dream Which the old Greek mountain dreamt upon nights divine; To expound such wonder, Human speech avails not, Yet there dies no poorest weed that such a glory exhales not.

Think of all these treasures, Matchless works and pleasures, Every one a marvel, more than thought can say; Then think in what bright showers We thicken fields and bowers, And with what heaps of sweetness half stifle wanton May. Think of the mossy forests By the bee-birds haunted, And all those Amazonian plains, lone lying, as enchanted.

Trees themselves are ours; Fruits are born of flowers; Peach and roughest nut were blossoms in the spring. The lusty bee knows well The news, and comes pell-mell And dances in the bloomy thicks with darksome antheming. Beneath the very burden Of planet-pressing ocean We wash our smiling cheeks in peace, a thought for meek devotion.

Who shall say that flowers Dress not heaven’s own bowers? Who its love without them can fancy—or sweet floor? Who shall even dare To say we sprang not there, And came not down, that Love might bring one piece of heaven the more? Oh! pray believe that angels From those blue dominions Brought us in their white laps down, ’twixt their golden pinions.