White with the whiteness of the snow,
Pink with the faintest rosy glow,
⁠They blossom on their sprays;
They glad the borders with their bloom,
And sweeten with their rich perfume
⁠The mossy garden ways.

The dew that from their brimming leaves
Drips down, the mignonette receives,
⁠And sweeter grows thereby;
The tall June lilies stand anear,
In raiment white and gold, and here
⁠The purple pansies lie.

Warm sunshine glitters over all,
On daisied sward and ivied wall,
⁠On lily, pansy, rose;
While flitting round each garden bed,
With joyous laugh and airy tread,
⁠A fairer sunbeam goes.

A little human blossom, bright
With childish, innocent delight
⁠Of life yet in its dawn;
With sunshine prisoned in her hair,
Deep eyes unshadowed by a care,
⁠She gambols on the lawn.

She checks the light elastic tread,
And stays to hear, far overhead,
⁠The lark's song to its close;
Eyes shaded by two tiny hands —
We pray God bless her as she stands,
⁠Our little daughter Rose.

Yea, bless the Rose, dear God, since we
Have given the Lily back to thee,
⁠That bloomed with her awhile;
Yea, bless her deeply, doubly now,
For her dear sake, whose angel brow
⁠Reflects thine awful smile.

How often in her childish face,
Our hungry, longing eyes can trace
⁠The looks of one away;
How often in her merry tone
A music wakes, more sad than moan,
⁠Of accents hushed for aye!

God bless the child to blossom here,
Our clinging human hearts to cheer,
⁠Till life has reached its close;
To grow in sweetest grace and bloom,
To beautify the dear old home,
⁠Out precious daughter Rose!

I at the banquet of the gods have sate
⁠Above the clouds that shroud these earthly plains,
Their nectar quaffed, and their ambrosia ate,
⁠And felt the Olympian ichor in my veins.

Apollo, like a glory in a gloom,
⁠Jove's thund’rous brow, and Juno's face serene,
Chaste Dian's grace, the auroral blush and bloom
⁠That Venus owns, these mortal eyes have seen.

Mad with desire I strove the charm to seize
⁠That should again renew to sense and soul
On earth below those heavenly ecstasies, —
⁠And I their nectar and ambrosia stole.

But who against the gods shall e'er prevail?
⁠The bliss of heaven on earth we may not own;
Stale tastes the nectar here, the ambrosia stale,
⁠The ethereal flavor lost, the aroma flown.

And so the gods condemn me here to stand
⁠Thirsting within the stream that from me flees,
Hungering 'mid fruits ambrosial that my hand
⁠Forever vainly reaches out to seize.

My sense the music of Apollo haunts,
⁠But dim and distant and beyond my reach;
I hear afar the gods' grand utterance,
⁠But cannot shape it into mortal speech.

In silence still I feel as in a dream
⁠Their dim, mysterious whisperings everywhere, —
On the lone hills, in forest, reed, and stream,
⁠In night's low breathings, in the sea's despair.

So taunting ever with half-confidence
⁠That wins the listening ear, but will not speak,
Pleasing and puzzling all the soul and sense,
⁠The gods forever mock us mortals weak.

O poets, in whatever realm or clime,
⁠Pity me — Tantalus — for you must feel
How nature lures us on with dreams sublime,
⁠And hints the secret she will ne'er reveal!