Classic Poem

Welcome! oh! welcome once again,
Thou dearest of all the laughing flowers
That open their odorous bosoms when
The summer birds are in their bowers.
There is none that I love, sweet gem, like thee,
So mildly through the green leaves stealing;
For I seem, as thy delicate flush I see,
In the dewy haunts of my youth to be;
And a gladsome youthful feeling
Springs to my heart, that not all the glare
Of the blossoming East could awaken there.

Glorious and glad it were, no doubt,
Over the billowy sea to sail,
And to find every spot of the wide world out
So bright and fair in the minstrel's tale.
To roam by old Tiber's classic tide
At eve, when round the gushing waters
Shades of renown will seem to glide,
And amidst the myrtles' flowery pride
Walk Italy's soft daughters:
Or to see Spain's haughtier damsels rove
Through the delicious orange grove.

Glorious it were, where the bright heaven glows,
To wander idly far away,
And to scent that musk'd voluptuous rose
Of beauty, blest Circassia;
To spy some languid Indian maid
Wooing, at noon, the precious breeze,
Beneath the proud magnolia's shade;
Or a Chilian girl at random laid
On a couch of amaryllides;
To behold the cocoa-palm, so fair
To the eye of the southern islander.

Glorious, camellian blooms to find
In the jealous realms of far Japan,
Or the epidendrum's garlands twined
Round the tall, trees of Hindostan:
All this were glad, and awhile to be
Like a spirit wand'ring gaily;
But ah! what souls, to whom these are free,
Would give them all to share with me
The joys that I gather daily,
When, out in the morning's dewy spring,
I mark the wild rose blossoming?

When the foot-path's winding track is lost
Beneath the deep o'erhanging grass,
And the golden pollen forth is tost
Thickly upon me as I pass;
When England is Paradise all over;
When flowers are breathing, birds are singing;
When the honeysuckle I first discover
Balming the air, and in the clover
The early scythe is ringing;
When gales in the billowy grass delight,
And a silvery beauty tracks their flight.

And, more than all, the sweet wild rose,
Starring each bush in lanes and glades,
Smiles in each lovelier tint that glows
On the cheeks of England's peerless maids;
Some with a deeper, fuller hue,
Like lass o'er the foamy milk-pail chanting;
Lighter are some, and gemm'd with dew,
Like ladies whose lovers all are true,
And nought on earth have wanting,
But their eyes on beauteous scenes are bent
That own them their chief ornament.

And some—alas! that a British maid
In beauty should ever resemble them!
Like damsel heart-broken and betray'd,
Droop softly on their slender stem:
Hid in the wild wood's deepest shade,
Flowers of such snowy loveliness,
That, almost without light fancy's aid,
Seem they for touching emblems made
Of beauty smitten by distress.
But enough—the wild rose is the queen of June,
When flowers are abroad, and birds in tune.