They did their best; their hands eras’d
  The thorns of greater strength and size;
Then ’mid the softer moss they plac’d
  The exiled flower of paradise.

The plant took root; the beams and showers
  Came kindly, and its fair head rear’d;
But lo! around its heaven of flowers
  The thorns and moss of earth appear’d.

Type of the greater change that then
  Upon our hapless nature fell,
When the degenerate hearts of men
  Bore sin and all the thorns of hell.

Happy, indeed, and sweet our pain,
  However torn, however tost,
If, like the rose, our hearts retain
  Some vestige of the heaven we’ve lost.

Where she upon this colder sphere
  Found shelter first, she there abode;
Her native bowers, unseen were near,
  And near her still Euphrates flowed—­

Brilliantly flow’d; but, ah! how dim,
  Compar’d to what its light had been;—­
As if the fiery cherubim
  Let pass the tide, but kept its sheen.

At first she liv’d and reigned alone,
  No lily-maidens yet had birth;
No turban’d tulips round her throne
  Bow’d with their foreheads to the earth.

No rival sisters had she yet—­
  She with the snowy forehead fringed
With blushes; nor the sweet brunette
  Whose cheek the yellow sun has ting’d.

Nor all the harbingers of May,
  Nor all the clustering joys of June: 
Uncarpeted the bare earth lay,
  Unhung the branches’ gay festoon.

But Nature came in kindly mood,
  And gave her kindred of her own,
Knowing full well it is not good
  For man or flower to be alone.

Long in her happy court she dwelt,
  In floral games and feasts of mirth,
Until her heart kind wishes felt
  To share her joy with all the earth.

To go from longing land to land
  A stateless queen, a welcome guest,
O’er hill and vale, by sea and strand,
  From North to South, and East to West.

And thus it is that every year,
  Ere Autumn dons his russet robe,
She calls her unseen charioteer,
  And makes her progress through the globe.

First, sharing in the month-long feast—­
  “The Feast of Roses”—­in whose light
And grateful joy, the first and least
  Of all her subjects reunite.

She sends her heralds on before: 
  The bee rings out his bugle bold,
The daisy spreads her marbled floor,
  The buttercup her cloth of gold.

The lark leaps up into the sky,
  To watch her coming from afar;
The larger moon descends more nigh,
  More lingering lags the morning star.

From out the villages and towns,
  From all of mankind’s mix’d abodes,
The people, by the lawns and downs,
  Go meet her on the winding roads.

And some would bear her in their hands,
  And some would press her to their breast,
And some would worship where she stands,
  And some would claim her as their guest.