To Flora When April woke the drowsy flowers, And vagrant odors thronged the breeze, And bluebirds wrangled in the bowers, And daisies flashed along the leas, And faint arbutus strove among Dead winter's leaf-strewn wreck to rise, And nature's sweetly jubilant song Went murmuring up the sunny skies, Into this cheerful world you came, And gained by right your vernal name.

Joyously, gratefully, after their long wrestling With the bitter cold and the harsh white winter, They heard the step of Spring on the edge of melting snow-drifts; Gladly, with courage that flashed from their life-beaten souls, As the fire-sparks fly from the hammered stone, They hailed the fragrant arbutus; Its sweetness trailed beside the path that they cut through the forest, And they gave it the name of their ship Mayflower.

to whom the old man lifts his hat, and little children cease from their sports as he passes, and quietly slip the innocent daisy, or the sweet-scented arbutus into his hand, which they have culled from the wide commons, where, they have been told, the good Sea-flower loved to stray.