A CIRCLE OF FRIENDS *[1]
COMPARED TO FLOWERS.
Go seek the choicest sweets that Nature fair
Hath kindly trusted to the culturer's care,—
Unfolding buds, with vernal dew-drops pure,
Resplendent flowers, that summer suns mature,
- ↑
*At the dissolution of a Literary Society, whose members (nine of each sex) were united in friendship as well as in intellectual pursuit, it was proposed that some emblematic poem should preserve the recollection of their pleasant intercourse. Thus the foregoing poem, which has been hitherto unpublished, was called into existence; and a beautifully painted bouquet was also executed by another member, in which the eighteen personified flowers were tastefully grouped.
The arbitrary signification of the inmates of Flora's realm not being as generally adopted at that period, as now, the selections in the foregoing lines were founded less upon those, than upon some supposed resemblance between the flowers and the character they typified. Now, at the expiration of a quarter of a century, during which the spoiler has not left our circle unvisited, some of the passages acquire interest, as being linked by tender associations to the memory of the departed and beloved.
