Thy flowers of hope expanded long ago, Long since their blossoms withered on the tree: No second spring can come to make them blow, But in the silent winter of the grave They lie with blighted love and buried woe.

Hardly had the mountain violet Spread its blossoms on the sod, Ere they laid the turf above thee, And thy spirit rose to God.

"The almond blossoms in the vale; The aloe from the rock Throws out its long and prickly leaves, Nor dreads the tempest's shock: A blessed land, I ween, is that, Though luckless is its Bey.

What plant we in the apple-tree? Sweets for a hundred flowery springs, To load the May-wind's restless wings, When, from the orchard-row, he pours Its fragrance through our open doors; A world of blossoms for the bee; Flowers for the sick girl's silent room; For the glad infant, sprigs of bloom, We plant with the apple-tree.

The snow-flake that the cliff receives The diamonds of the showers Spring's tender blossoms, buds, and leaves The sisterhood of flowers Morn's early beam, eve's balmy breeze Her purity define; But Ida's dearer far than these To this fond breast of mine.

Then youth's fair blossoms crowd to view your play, And wait as on an oracle; while they, The tender souls, who love the melting mood, Suck from your work their melancholy food; Now this one, and now that, you deeply stir, Each sees the working of his heart laid bare.

Cuba there is a blossoming shrub whose multitudinous crimson flowers are so seductive to the humming-birds that they hover all day around it, buried in its blossoms until petal and wing seem one.

Frederika Bremer relates that daily she brought home handfuls of these blossoms to her chamber, and nightly they all disappeared.

Before the frost is gone, and while the newborn season is yet too weak to assert itself by actually uplifting anything, it can at least let fall these blossoms, one by one, till they wave defiance to the winter on a thousand boughs.

It is an exquisitely delicate little creature, bears its blossoms in clusters, unlike most of the early species, and opens in gradual succession each white and pink-veined bell.

One of the most shy of wild plants, easily banished from its locality by any invasion, it yet takes to the garden with unpardonable readiness, doubles its size, blossoms earlier, repudiates its love of water, and flaunts its great leaves in the unnatural confinement until it elbows out the exotics.

After all, in spite of the croakers, this festival could not have been much better-timed, the delicate blossoms which mark the period are usually in perfection on this day, and it is not long before they are past their prime.

May expands to its prime of beauty; the summer birds come with the fruit-blossoms, the gardens are deluged with bloom and the air with melody, while in the woods the timid spring-flowers fold themselves away in silence and give place to a brighter splendor.

Wordsworth never immortalized a flower more surely than Emerson this, and it needs no weaker words; there is nothing else in which the change from nakedness to beauty is so sudden, and when you bring home the great mass of blossoms they appear all ready to flutter away again from your hands and leave you disenchanted.

And beneath it grows often its more abundant kinsman, the Dwarf Cornel, with the same four great petals enveloping its floral cluster, but lingering low upon the ground,an herb whose blossoms mimic the statelier tree.

But it is not safe to vary many days from the twentieth of May, for the plant is not long in perfection, and is past its prime when the lower blossoms begin to wither on the stem.

Of the more delicate early blossoms, the Dwarf Cornel, the Solomon's-Seal, and the Yellow Violet still linger in the woods, but rapidly make way for larger masses and more conspicuous hues.

The granite ribs have there a thin covering of crispest moss, spangled with the white starry blossoms of the Mountain Cinquefoil; and as I lay and watched the red lilies that waved their innumerable urns around me, it needed but little imagination to see a thousand altars, sending visible flames forever upward to the answering sun.

There is a spot whence I have in ten minutes brought away as many as I could hold in both arms, some bearing fifty blossoms on a single stalk; and I could not believe that there was such another mass of color in the world.

My windows were open, and the faint scent of springing grass and opening blossoms came in on every southern breath of wind.

If perfect, unalloyed happiness has ever existed in this weary, work-day world of ours, it has been in the bosoms of some of those old religious artists of the Middle Ages, whose thoughts grew and flowered in prayerful shadows, bursting into thousands of quaint and fanciful blossoms on the pages of missal and breviary.

"Praised be God, many new ideas sprang up in my mind last night, and seemed to shoot forth in blossoms.

The gardens and orchards around were gay in the rich crimson blossoms of the apple tree; the air was filled with the sweet fragrance of flowers, and the birds were singing beautifully, when little Bertie looked for the last time on the scenes of earth.

Mr. Bernard determined to explore the region where this flower was said to grow, that he might see where the wild girl sought the blossoms of which Nature was so jealous.

Calmly he took up the cripple's cane and went home; the birds sang no song,after tempests they do not sing until the sun shines,neither did the blossoms give him any greeting.