THE WILD HONEYSUCKLE
by: Philip Freneau (1752-1832)
- AIR flower,
that dost so comely grow,
- Hid in this silent, dull retreat,
- Untouched thy honied blossoms blow,
- Unseen thy little branches greet:
- No roving foot shall crush thee here,
- No busy hand provoke a tear.
-
- By Natures self in white arrayed,
- She bade thee shun the vulgar eye,
- And planted here the guardian shade,
- And sent soft waters murmuring by;
- Thus quietly thy summer goes,
- Thy days declining to repose.
-
- Smit with those charms, that must decay,
- I grieve to see your future doom;
- They died--nor were those flowers more gay,
- The flowers that did in Eden bloom;
- Unpitying frosts and Autumns power
- Shall leave no vestige of this flower.
-
- From morning suns and evening dews
- At first thy little being came;
- If nothing once, you nothing lose,
- For when you die you are the same;
- The space between is but an hour,
- The frail duration of flower.
"The Wild Honeysuckle"
is reprinted from An American Anthology: 1787-1900. Ed.
Edmund Clarence Stedman. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1900. |
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