Where huge rock buttresses bear up the clouds, <br />With all their floating reservoirs of rain; <br />Where the wide winding sheet of snow enshrouds <br />The glacier's sapphire clefts and glittering plain, <br />This flow'r is found—the well-nam'd Edelweiss. <br />Of frozen beds of foam and fields of ice, <br />Soft downy blossom—type of purity, <br />Of courage high and low humility, <br />Fast-rooted Love clinging to dire mischance. <br />Faith fixed as Fate defying circumstance, <br />O'er the unstable seas thee do I send, <br />Star of the steadfast mountains, to the friend <br />In whom thy loftiest, lowliest graces meet. <br />Bloom, Edelweiss, at her beloved feet!<br /><br />Frances Anne Kemble<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/sonnet-on-an-edelweiss/
