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I have no costly Dahlias, nor greenhouse flowers to weep,
But I passed the rich man's garden, and the mourning there was deep,
For the crownless queens, all drooping, hung amid the wasted sod,
Like Boadicea, bent with shame, beneath the Roman rod.

'Tis hard to say farewell, my plants, 'tis hard to say farewell;
The florist might despise ye, yet your worth I cannot tell;
For at rising sun, or even-tide, in sorrow or in glee,
Your fragrant lips have ever op'd, to speak good words to me.

Most dear ye were to him who died, when summer round ye play'd,
That good old man, who looked with love on all that God had made;
Who, when his first familiar friends sank down in dreamless rest,
Took nature's green and living things more closely to his breast.