queen doth do,
Hath yearly done the queen of flowers.

The beauteous queen of all the flowers,
Whose faintest sigh is like a spell,
Was born in Eden's sinless bowers
Long ere our primal parents fell.

There in a perfect form she grew,
Nor felt decay, nor tasted death;
Heaven was reflected in her hue,
And heaven's own odours filled her breath.

And ere the angel of the sword
Drove thence the founders of our race,
They knelt before him, and implor'd
Some relic of that radiant place:

Some relic that, while time would last,
Should make men weep their fatal sin;
Proof of the glory that was past,
And type of that they yet might win.

The angel turn'd, and ere his hands
The gates of bliss for ever close,
Pluck'd from the fairest tree that stands
Within heaven's walls--the peerless rose.

And as he gave it unto them,
Let fall a tear upon its leaves--
The same celestial liquid gem
We oft perceive on dewy eves.

Grateful the hapless twain went forth,
The golden portals backward whirl'd,
Then first they felt the biting north,
And all the rigour of this world.

Then first the dreadful curse had power
To chill the life-streams at their source,
Till e'en the sap within the flower
Grew curdled in its upward course.

They twin'd their trembling hands across
Their trembling breasts against the drift,
Then sought some little mound of moss
Wherein to lay their precious gift.

Some little soft and mossy mound,
Wherein the flower might rest till morn;
In vain! God's curse was on the ground,
For through the moss out gleam'd the thorn!

Out gleam'd the fork`ed plant, as if
The serpent tempter, in his rage,
Had put his tongue in every leaf
To mock them through their pilgrimage.

They did their best; their hands eras'd
The thorns of greater strength and size;
Then 'mid the softer moss they plac'd
The exiled flower of paradise.

The plant took root; the beams and showers
Came kindly, and its fair head rear'd;
But lo! around its heaven of flowers
The thorns and moss of earth appear'd.

Type of the greater change that then
Upon our hapless nature fell,
When the degenerate hearts of men
Bore sin and all the thorns of hell.

Happy, indeed, and sweet our pain,
However torn, however tost,
If, like the rose, our hearts retain
Some vestige of the heaven we've lost.

Where she upon this colder sphere
Found shelter first, she there abode;
Her nativ