Old-fashioned flowers! I love them all: <br />The morning-glories on the wall, <br />The pansies in their patch of shade, <br />The violets, stolen from a glade, <br />The bleeding hearts and columbine, <br />Have long been garden friends of mine; <br />But memory every summer flocks <br />About a clump of hollyhocks. <br /> <br />The mother loved them years ago; <br />Beside the fence they used to grow, <br />And though the garden changed each year <br />And certain blooms would disappear <br />To give their places in the ground <br />To something new that mother found, <br />Some pretty bloom or rosebush rare— <br />The hollyhocks were always there. <br /> <br />It seems but yesterday to me <br />She led me down the yard to see <br />The first tall spires, with bloom aflame, <br />And taught me to pronounce their name. <br />And year by year I watched them grow, <br />The first flowers I had come to know. <br />And with the mother dear I'd yearn <br />To see the hollyhocks return. <br /> <br />The garden of my boyhood days <br />With hollyhocks was kept ablaze; <br />In all my recollections they <br />In friendly columns nod and sway; <br />And when to-day their blooms I see, <br />Always the mother smiles at me; <br />The mind's bright chambers, life unlocks <br />Each summer with the hollyhocks.<br /><br />Edgar Albert Guest<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/hollyhocks/
