We praise the hot-house flowers that loom Far from their native sun and shade, The flaring forms that flaunt their bloom, Like jewels under glass displayed. With never breeze to kiss their heads, They have their birth and live and die On costly, artificial beds, Beneath an ever-crystal sky. For whomsoever idly scans, Baring their treasures to entice, Like fair and sumptuous courtesans, They stand for sale at golden price. Fine porcelain holds their gathered groups, Or glove-clad fingers fondle them Between the dances, till each droops Upon a limp or broken stem. But down amid the grass unreaped, Shunning the curious, in repose And silence all the long day steeped, A little woodland daisy blows. A butterfly upon the wing To point the place, a casual look, And you surprise the sweet, shy thing, Within its calm, sequestered nook. Beneath the blue it openeth, Rising on slender, vernal rod, Spreading its soul in fragrant breath For solitude and for its God. And proud camellias tall and white, Red tulips in a flaming mass, Are all at once forgotten quite, For the small flower amid the grass. THE FELLAH _On seeing a Water-Colour by Princess Mathilde_ Caprice of brush fantastical, And of imperial idleness, Your fellah-sphinx presents us all With an enigma worth the guess. A rigid fashion, verily, This mask, this garment, seem to us, Intriguing with its mystery The ball-room's every Oedipus. Isis bequeathed her veil of old To modern daughters of the Nile. But through this band austere, behold, Two stars of radiance beam and smile,-- Two stars, two eyes, two poems that spring, The soft, voluptuous fires whereof Resolve the riddle, murmuring: "Lo, I am Beauty! Be thou Love!" THE GARRET From balcony tiles where casual cats Sit low in wait for birds unwise, I see the worn and riven slats Of a poor, humble garret rise. Now could I as an author lie, To give you comfort as you think, Its window I would falsify, And frame with flowers refined and pink, And place within it Rigolette With her cheap looking-glass, somehow, Whose broken glazing mirrors yet A portion of her pretty brow; Or Margery, her dress undone, Her hair blown free, her tie forgot, Watering in the pleasant sun Her pail-encompassed garden-plot; Or poet-youth whom fame awaits, Who scans his verse and eyes the hills, Or in a reverie contemplates Montmartre with its distant mills. Alas! my garret is no feint. There climbeth no convolvulus. The window with its nibbled paint Leers filmy and unluminous. Alike for artist and grisette, Alike for widower and lad, A garret--save to music set-- Is never otherwise than sad. Of old, beneath an angle pent, That forced the forehead to a kiss, Love, with a folding-couch content, To chat with Susan deemed it bliss. But we must wad our bliss about With cushioned walls and laces wide, And silks that flutter in and out, O'er beds by Monbro canopied.