Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Scotland: Vols. VI–VIII. 1876–79.
The Dial of Flowers
By Felicia Hemans (17931835)
’T
As they floated in light away,
By the opening and the folding flowers,
That laugh to the summer’s day.
And its graceful cup and bell,
In whose colored vase might sleep the dew,
Like a pearl in an ocean shell.
In a golden current on,
Ere from the garden, man’s first abode,
The glorious guests were gone.
Those days of song and dreams—
When shepherds gathered their flocks of old
By the blue Arcadian streams.
Far off in a breezeless main,
Which many a bark, with a weary quest,
Has sought, but still in vain.
Marked thus—even thus—on earth,
By the closing of one hope’s delight,
And another’s gentle birth?
Shutting in turn, may leave
A lingerer still for the sunset hour,
A charm for the shaded eve.