Edward Bulwer-Lytton

The First Violets

  Who that has loved knows not the tender tale
    Which flowers reveal, when lips are coy to tell?
  Whose youth has paused not, dreaming, in the vale
            Where the rath violets dwell?

  Lo, where they shrink along the lonely brake,
    Under the leafless melancholy tree;
  Not yet the cuckoo sings, nor glides the snake,
            Nor wild thyme lures the bee;

  Yet at their sight and scent entranced and thrall'd,
    All June seems golden in the April skies;
  How sweet the days we yearn for,--till fulfill'd:
            O distant Paradise,

  Dear Land to which Desire for ever flees;
    Time doth no present to our grasp allow,
  Say in the fix'd Eternal shall we seize
            At last the fleeting Now?

  Dream not of days to come--of that Unknown
    Whither Hope wanders--maze without a clue;
  Give their true witchery to the flowers;--thine own
            Youth in their youth renew.

  Avarice, remember when the cowslip's gold
    Lured and yet lost its glitter in thy grasp.
  Do thy hoards glad thee more than those of old?
            Those wither'd in thy clasp,

  From these thy clasp falls palsied.--It was then
    That thou wert rich--thy coffers are a lie;
  Alas, poor fool, Joy is the wealth of men,
            And Care their penury.

  Come, foil'd Ambition, what hast thou desired?
    Empire and power?--O, wanderer, tempest-tost!
  These once were thine, when life's gay spring inspired
            Thy soul with glories lost.

  Let the flowers charm thee back to that rich time
    When golden Dreamland lay within thy chart,
  When Love bestow'd a realm indeed sublime--
            The boundless human heart.

  Hark, hark again, the tread of bashful feet!
    Hark the boughs rustling round the trysting-place!
  Let air again with one dear breath be sweet,
            Earth fair with one dear face.

  Brief-lived first flowers--first love! The hours steal on
    To prank the world in summer's pomp of hue,
  But what can flaunt beneath a fiercer sun
            Worth what we lose in you?

  Oft by a flower, a leaf, in some loved book
    We mark the lines that charm us most;--Retrace
  Thy life;--recall its loveliest passage;--Look,
            Dead violets keep the place!