‘It is but thin soil where we stand; I have felt my roots in a richer ere this. I have seen a bunch of violets in a glass vase, tied loosely with a straw, which reminded me of myself.’—The Week.

I am a parcel of vain strivings tied

   By a chance bond together,

Dangling this way and that, their links

   Were made so loose and wide,

                        Methinks,

         For milder weather.

A bunch of violets without their roots,

   And sorrel intermixed,

Encircled by a wisp of straw

   Once coiled about their shoots,

                        The law

         By which I’m fixed.

A nosegay which Time clutched from out

   Those fair Elysian fields,

With weeds and broken stems, in haste,

   Doth make the rabble rout

                        That waste

         The day he yields.

And here I bloom for a short hour unseen,

   Drinking my juices up,

With no root in the land

   To keep my branches green,

                        But stand

         In a bare cup.

Some tender buds were left upon my stem

   In mimicry of life,

But ah! the children will not know,

   Till time has withered them,

                        The woe

         With which they’re rife.

But now I see I was not plucked for nought,

   And after in life’s vase

Of glass set while I might survive,

   But by a kind hand brought

                        Alive

         To a strange place.

That stock thus thinned will soon redeem its hours,

   And by another year,

Such as God knows, with freer air,

   More fruits and fairer flowers

                        Will bear,

         While I droop here.