The Sacred Flora Author:Henry Bacon Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE PHANTOM FORM. I Look upon the playful group, Where sportive leap and whirling hoop Are symbols of the joy within, Unclouded by the mists of sin: And as J ... more »gaze, I see a form With all the-sweet affections warm, And with a life all rife with words To stir the spirit's finer chords. I spring to greet her—but, alaa ! Through the void air I swiftly pass, And find, too late to check my tears, My thought in phantom shape appears 1 And all I saw was but the thought That on the air its image wrought; And ever thus my heart must be The sport of Fancy's mimicry ! But nay; it shall not give me pain, For what I saw shall still remain; And round my heart the smile will play, When phantom beauty flees away ! And I will wait the dreamy hour, When bright a?ain shall bloom the flower Whose beauty is a fairer sight Than cornea with morn or evening light. FLOWERS ON THE GRAVE. Aye, let them spring, as on the face Of the pale sleeper smiles appear; The love that plucks them will replace, And give for dew) the tear. A Visitor to a burial place in Edinburgh, records that she was much affected by seeing a board on which was painted in bold characters—" Touch not the Flowers!" She was affected by the idea that such a caution, in such a place, should be needed; and sad pictures of graves robbed of floral beauty, arose to her imagination. We marvel not at her feelings, and would that from the depths of the grave a voice might arise forbidding1 such sacrilege. I have spoken of " Flowers from a Child's Grave," on the title-page of this Flora, but let it not be imagined that I need to remember the plea just mentioned. It seems a wanton act of cruelty to pluck flowers from a child's grave—a place whichabove all others ought to be permitted to retain whatever of b...« less