'Purpureos spargam flores.' <br /> <br />THE wreath that star-crowned Shelley gave <br />Is lying on thy Roman grave, <br />Yet on its turf young April sets <br />Her store of slender violets; <br />Though all the Gods their garlands shower, <br />I too may bring one purple flower. <br />Alas! what blossom shall I bring, <br />That opens in my Northern spring? <br />The garden beds have all run wild, <br />So trim when I was yet a child; <br />Flat plantains and unseemly stalks <br />Have crept across the gravel walks; <br />The vines are dead, long, long ago, <br />The almond buds no longer blow. <br />No more upon its mound I see <br />The azure, plume-bound fleur-de-lis; <br />Where once the tulips used to show, <br />In straggling tufts the pansies grow; <br />The grass has quenched my white-rayed gem, <br />The flowering 'Star of Bethlehem,' <br />Though its long blade of glossy green <br />And pallid stripe may still be seen. <br />Nature, who treads her nobles down, <br />And gives their birthright to the clown, <br />Has sown her base-born weedy things <br />Above the garden's queens and kings. <br />Yet one sweet flower of ancient race <br />Springs in the old familiar place. <br />When snows were melting down the vale, <br />And Earth unlaced her icy mail, <br />And March his stormy trumpet blew, <br />And tender green came peeping through, <br />I loved the earliest one to seek <br />That broke the soil with emerald beak, <br />And watch the trembling bells so blue <br />Spread on the column as it grew. <br />Meek child of earth! thou wilt not shame <br />The sweet, dead poet's holy name; <br />The God of music gave thee birth, <br />Called from the crimson-spotted earth, <br />Where, sobbing his young life away, <br />His own fair Hyacinthus lay. <br />The hyacinth my garden gave <br />Shall lie upon that Roman grave!<br /><br />Oliver Wendell Holmes<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/after-a-lecture-on-keats/
