PASSION-FLOWER.
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lowed by religion, — a selfish craving only; every source of enjoyment stifled to cherish this burning thirst. Yet the picture, so minute in its touches, is true as death. I should not like Delphine now.’
Events in life, apparently trivial, often seemed to her
full of mystic significance, and it was her pleasure to
turn such to poetry. On one occasion, the sight of a
passion-flower, given by one lady to another, and then
lost, appeared to her so significant of the character,
relation, and destiny of the two, that it drew from her lines
of which two or three seem worth preserving, as
indicating her feeling of social relations.
| ‘Dear friend, my heart grew pensive when I saw |
| The flower, for thee so sweetly set apart, |
| By one whose passionless though tender heart |
| Is worthy to bestow, as angels are, |
| By an unheeding hand conveyed away, |
| To close, in unsoothed night, the promise of its day. |
| ***** |
| ‘The mystic flower read in thy soul-filled eye |
| To its life's question the desired reply, |
| But came no nearer. On thy gentle breast |
| It hoped to find the haven of its rest; |
| But in cold night, hurried afar from thee, |
| It closed its once halt-smiling destiny. |
| ‘Yet thus, methinks, it utters as it dies, — |
| “By the pure truth of those calm, gentle eyes |
| Which saw my life should find its aim in thine, |
| I see a clime where no strait laws confine. |
| In that blest land where twos ne’er know a three, |
| Save as the accord of their fine sympathy, |
| O, best-loved, I will wait for thee!”’ |
