Classic Poem

" A pink primrose from the plant he knows
Let me send him in his far spot,
From the root I brought to his garden-knot
When he dwelt herefrom but a little mile;
A root I had reared at that time of love,
And of all my stock the best that throve,
Which he took with so warm a smile."

Such she sang and said, and aflush she sped
To her Love's old home hard by
Ere he left that nook for the wider sky
Of a southern country unassayed.
And she crept to the border of early stocks,
Of pansies, pinks, and hollyhocks,
Where their vows and the gift were made.

" It has not bloomed!" And her glances gloomed
As she missed the expected hue.
" Yet the rest are in blow the border through;
Nor is leaf or bud of it evident.
Ah, can it have died of an over-care
In its tendance, sprung of his charge to spare
No pains for its nourishment?"

She turned her round from the wrong ones found
To the seat where a year before
She had brought it him as the best of her store,
And lo, on a ledge of the wall she neared,
Lay its withered skeleton, dry and brown,
Untouched since there he had laid it down
When she waved and disappeared.