II.

  Oh!  Southern cheeks are quick to feel
  The magic finger of the frost;
  And Mildred heard but one long peal
  From the fierce Arctic, which embossed
  Her window-panes, and set the seal

  Of cold on all her eye beheld,
  When through her veins there swept new fire,
  And, in her answering bosom, swelled
  New purposes and new desire,
  And force to higher deeds impelled.

  Ah! well for her the languor cast
  That followed from her Southern clime! 
  The time would come—­was coming fast,—­
  Love’s consummated, crowning time—­
  Of which her heart had antepast!

  A strange new life was in her breast;
  Her eyes were full of wondrous dreams;
  She sailed all whiles from crest to crest
  Of a broad ocean, through whose gleams
  She saw an island wrapped in rest!

  And as she drove across the sea,
  Toward the fair port that fixed her gaze,
  Her life was like a rosary,
  Whose slowly counted beads were days
  Of prayer for one that was to be!

  III.

  Oh roses, roses!  Who shall sing
  The beauty of the flowers of God! 
  Or thank the angel from whose wing
  The seeds are scattered on the sod
  From which such bloom and perfume spring!

  Sure they have heavenly genesis
  Which make a heaven of every place;
  Which company our bale and bliss,
  And never to our sinning race
  Speak aught unhallowed, or amiss!

  When love is grieved, their buds atone;
  When love is wed, their forms are near;
  They blend their breathing with the moan
  Of love when dying, and the bier
  Is white with them in every zone.

  No spot is mean that they begem;
  No nosegay fair that holds them not;
  They melt the pride and stir the phlegm
  Of lord and churl, in court and cot,
  And weave a common diadem

  For human brows where’er they grow. 
  They write all languages of red,
  They speak all dialects of snow,
  And all the words of gold are said
  With fragrant meanings where they blow!

  Oh sweetest flowers!  Oh flowers divine! 
  In which God comes so closely down,
  We gather from his chosen sign
  The tints that cluster in his crown—­
  The perfume of his breath benign!

  Oh sweetest flowers!  Oh flowers that hold
  The fragrant life of Paradise
  For a brief day, shut told in fold,
  That we may drink it in a trice,
  And drop the empty pink and gold!

  Oh sweetest flowers, that have a breath
  For every passion that we feel! 
  That tell us what the Master saith
  Of blessing, in our woe and weal,
  And all events of life and death!

  IV.

  The time of roses came again;
  And one had bloomed within the manse,
  Bloomed in a burst of midnight pain,
  And plumed its life in fair expanse,
  Beneath love’s nursing sun and rain.