[ { "title": "The Flower must not blame the Bee", "author": "Emily Dickinson", "lines": [ "The Flower must not blame the Bee --", "That seeketh his felicity", "Too often at her door --", "", "But teach the Footman from Vevay --", "Mistress is \"not at home\" -- to say --", "To people -- any more!" ], "linecount": "6" }, { "title": "The Flower", "author": "George Herbert", "lines": [ "How fresh, O Lord, how sweet and clean", "Are thy returns! ev'n as the flowers in spring;", "To which, besides their own demean,", "The late-past frosts tributes of pleasure bring.", "Grief melts away", "Like snows in May,", "As if there were no such cold thing.", "", "Who would have thought my shrivelled heart", "Could have recovered greenness? It was gone", "Quite under ground; as flowers depart", "To see their mother-root, when they have blown;", "Where they together", "All the hard weather,", "Dead to the world, keep house unknown.", "", "These are thy wonders, Lord of power,", "Killing and quick'ning, bringing down to hell", "And up to heaven in an hour;", "Making a chiming of a passing-bell.", "We say amiss,", "This or that is:", "Thy word is all, if we could spell.", "", "O that I once past changing were,", "Fast in thy Paradise, where no flower can wither!", "Many a spring I shoot up fair,", "Off'ring at heav'n, growing and groaning thither:", "Nor doth my flower", "Want a spring shower,", "My sins and I joining together.", "", "But while I grow in a straight line,", "Still upwards bent, as if heav'n were mine own,", "Thy anger comes, and I decline:", "What frost to that? What pole is not the zone,", "Where all things burn,", "When thou dost turn,", "And the least frown of thine is shown?", "", "And now in age I bud again,", "After so many deaths I live and write;", "I once more smell the dew and rain,", "And relish versing: O my only light,", "It cannot be", "That I am he", "On whom thy tempests fell all night.", "", "These are thy wonders, Lord of love,", "To make us see we are but flowers that glide;", "Which when we once can find and prove,", "Thou hast a garden for us, where to bide.", "Who would be more,", "Swelling through store,", "Forfeit their Paradise by their pride." ], "linecount": "49" }, { "title": "The Reaper and the Flowers", "author": "Henry Wadsworth Longfellow", "lines": [ "There is a Reaper, whose name is Death,", "And, with his sickle keen,", "He reaps the bearded grain at a breath,", "And the flowers that grow between.", "", "\"Shall I have naught that is fair?\" saith he;", "\"Have naught but the bearded grain?", "Though the breath of these flowers is sweet to me,", "I will give them all back again.\"", "", "He gazed at the flowers with tearful eyes,", "He kissed their drooping leaves;", "It was for the Lord of Paradise", "He bound them in his sheaves.", "", "\"My Lord has need of these flowerets gay,\"", "The Reaper said, and smiled;", "\"Dear tokens of the earth are they,", "Where he was once a child.", "", "\"They shall all bloom in fields of light,", "Transplanted by my care,", "And saints, upon their garments white,", "These sacred blossoms wear.\"", "", "And the mother gave, in tears and pain,", "The flowers she most did love;", "She knew she should find them all again", "In the fields of light above.", "", "O, not in cruelty, not in wrath,", "The Reaper came that day;", "'T was an angel visited the green earth,", "And took the flowers away." ], "linecount": "28" }, { "title": "The Flower", "author": "Lord Alfred Tennyson", "lines": [ "Once in a golden hour", "I cast to earth a seed.", "Up there came a flower,", "The people said, a weed.", "", "To and fro they went", "Thro' my garden bower,", "And muttering discontent", "Cursed me and my flower.", "", "Then it grew so tall", "It wore a crown of light,", "But thieves from o'er the wall", "Stole the seed by night.", "", "Sow'd it far and wide", "By every town and tower,", "Till all the people cried,", "\"Splendid is the flower!\"", "", "Read my little fable:", "He that runs may read.", "Most can raise the flowers now,", "For all have got the seed.", "", "And some are pretty enough,", "And some are poor indeed;", "And now again the people", "Call it but a weed." ], "linecount": "24" }, { "title": "The Flower of Liberty", "author": "Oliver Wendell Holmes", "lines": [ "WHAT flower is this that greets the morn,", "Its hues from Heaven so freshly born?", "With burning star and flaming band", "It kindles all the sunset land:", "Oh tell us what its name may be,--", "Is this the Flower of Liberty?", "", "It is the banner of the free,", "The starry Flower of Liberty!", "", "In savage Nature's far abode", "Its tender seed our fathers sowed;", "The storm-winds rocked its swelling bud,", "Its opening leaves were streaked with blood,", "Till lo! earth's tyrants shook to see", "The full-blown Flower of Liberty!", "", "Then hail the banner of the free,", "The starry Flower of Liberty!", "", "Behold its streaming rays unite,", "One mingling flood of braided light,--", "The red that fires the Southern rose,", "With spotless white from Northern snows,", "And, spangled o'er its azure, see", "The sister Stars of Liberty!", "", "Then hail the banner of the free,", "The starry Flower of Liberty!", "", "The blades of heroes fence it round,", "Where'er it springs is holy ground;", "From tower and dome its glories spread;", "It waves where lonely sentries tread;", "It makes the land as ocean free,", "And plants an empire on the sea!", "", "Then hail the banner of the free,", "The starry Flower of Liberty!", "", "Thy sacred leaves, fair Freedom's flower,", "Shall ever float on dome and tower,", "To all their heavenly colors true,", "In blackening frost or crimson dew,--", "And God love us as we love thee,", "Thrice holy Flower of Liberty!", "", "Then hail the banner of the free,", "The starry FLOWER OF LIBERTY!" ], "linecount": "40" }, { "title": "449. Song—The Flowery banks of Cree", "author": "Robert Burns", "lines": [ "HERE is the glen, and here the bower", " All underneath the birchen shade;", "The village-bell has told the hour,", " O what can stay my lovely maid?", "", "", "’Tis not Maria’s whispering call;", " ’Tis but the balmy breathing gale,", "Mixt with some warbler’s dying fall,", " The dewy star of eve to hail.", "", "", "It is Maria’s voice I hear;", " So calls the woodlark in the grove,", "His little, faithful mate to cheer;", " At once ’tis music and ’tis love.", "", "", "And art thou come! and art thou true!", " O welcome dear to love and me!", "And let us all our vows renew,", " Along the flowery banks of Cree." ], "linecount": "16" }, { "title": "The Flowers", "author": "Robert Louis Stevenson", "lines": [ "All the names I know from nurse:", "Gardener's garters, Shepherd's purse,", "Bachelor's buttons, Lady's smock,", "And the Lady Hollyhock.", "", "Fairy places, fairy things,", "Fairy woods where the wild bee wings,", "Tiny trees for tiny dames--", "These must all be fairy names!", "", "Tiny woods below whose boughs", "Shady fairies weave a house;", "Tiny tree-tops, rose or thyme,", "Where the braver fairies climb!", "", "Fair are grown-up people's trees,", "But the fairest woods are these;", "Where, if I were not so tall,", "I should live for good and all." ], "linecount": "16" }, { "title": "What the Bee Is To the Floweret", "author": "Thomas Moore", "lines": [ "What the bee is to the floweret,", "When he looks for honey-dew,", "Through the leaves that close embower it,", "That, my love, I'll be to you.", "", "She. --", "", "What the bank, with verdure glowing,", "Is to waves that wander near,", "Whispering kisses, while they're going,", "That I'll be to you, my dear.", "", "She. --", "", "But they say, the bee's a rover,", "Who will fly, when sweets are gone,", "And, when once the kiss is over,", "Faithless brooks will wander on.", "", "He. --", "", "Nay, if flowers will lose their looks", "If sunny banks will wear away,", "'Tis but right that bees and brooks", "Should sip and kiss them, while they may." ], "linecount": "19" }, { "title": "The Death of the Flowers", "author": "William Cullen Bryant", "lines": [ "The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year,", "Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sere.", "Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the autumn leaves lie dead;", "They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit's tread;", "The robin and the wren are flown, and from the shrubs the jay,", "And from the wood-top calls the crow through all the gloomy day.", "", "Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers, that lately sprang and stood", "In brighter light and softer airs, a beauteous sisterhood?", "Alas! they all are in their graves, the gentle race of flowers", "Are lying in their lowly beds, with the fair and good of ours.", "The rain is falling where they lie, but the cold November rain", "Calls not from out the gloomy earth the lovely ones again.", "", "The wind-flower and the violet, they perished long ago,", "And the brier-rose and the orchis died amid the summer glow;", "But on the hills the golden-rod, and the aster in the wood,", "And the yellow sun-flower by the brook in autumn beauty stood,", "Till fell the frost from the clear cold heaven, as falls the plague on men,", "And the brightness of their smile was gone, from upland, glade, and glen.", "", "And now, when comes the calm mild day, as still such days will come,", "To call the squirrel and the bee from out their winter home;", "When the sound of dropping nuts is heard, though all the trees are still,", "And twinkle in the smoky light the waters of the rill,", "The south wind searches for the flowers whose fragrance late he bore,", "And sighs to find them in the wood and by the stream no more.", "", "And then I think of one who in her youthful beauty died,", "The fair meek blossom that grew up and faded by my side.", "In the cold moist earth we laid her, when the forests cast the leaf,", "And we wept that one so lovely should have a life so brief:", "Yet not unmeet it was that one, like that young friend of ours,", "So gentle and so beautiful, should perish with the flowers." ], "linecount": "30" } ]