With pellucid studs the Ice-Flower gems
His rimy foliage, and his candied stems.

As water fluid is, till it do grow

Solid and fixed by cold,

Darwin.

So in warm seasons love doth loosely flow;

Frost only can it hold;

Your coldness and disdain

Does the sweet course restrain.

Cowley.

Cactus....Ardent Love.

The flower of the Cactus is chosen to signify ardent love, because of the glowing hues of the flower itself, and the heat of the climate in which the plant grows to the greatest size. The gorgeousness of the flower of the Cactus needs no eulogy. No fitter emblem could have been selected to represent the passion of love in its full flame.

I think of thee, when soft and wide

The evening spreads her robes of light,
And, like a young and timid bride,

Sits blushing in the arms of night:

And when the moon's sweet crescent springs
In light o'er heaven's deep waveless sea,
And stars are forth like blessed things,

I think of thee—I think of thee.

G. W. Prentice.

Thou'rt like a star; for when my way was cheerless

and forlorn,

And all was blackness like the sky before a coming

storm,

Thy beaming smile and words of love, thy heart of kindness free,

Illumed my path, then cheered my soul, and bade its sorrows flee.

Thou'rt like a star—when sad and lone I wander forth to view

The lamps of night, beneath their rays my spirit's

And thus I love to gaze on thee, and then I think

thou'st power

To mix the cup of joy for me, even in life's darkest

hour.

Thou'rt like a star—whene'er my eye is upward turned

to gaze

Upon those orbs, I mark with awe their clear celestial blaze;

And then thou seem'st so pure, so high, so beautifully

bright,

I almost feel as if it were an angel met my sight.

American Ladies' Magazine.

Could genius sink in dull decay,
And wisdom cease to lend her ray;
Should all that I have worshipped change,
Even this could not my heart estrange;
Thou still wouldst be the first, the first
That taught the love sad tears have nursed.
Mrs. Embury.

The sick soul

That burns with love's delusions, ever dreams,
Dreading its losses. It for ever makes
A gloomy shadow gather in the skies,
And clouds the day; and looking far beyond
The glory in its gaze, it sadly sees
Countless privations, and far-coming storms,
Shrinking from what it conjures.

Simms's Poems.

The rolling wheel, that runneth often round,
The hardest steel in tract of time doth tear;
And drizzling drops, that often do redound,
Firmest flint doth in continuance wear:
Yet cannot I, with many a dropping tear,
And long entreaty, soften her hard heart,
That she will once vouchsafe my plaint to hear,
Or look with pity on my painful smart:
But when I plead, she bids me play my part;
And when I weep, she says tears are but water;
And when I sigh, she says I know the art;
And when I wail, she turns herself to laughter;
So do I weep and wail, and plead in vain,
While she as steel and flint doth still remain.

Spenser.

Aloe.... Grief.

The Aloe is attached to the soil by very feeble roots; it delights to grow in the wilderness, and its taste is extremely bitter. Thus grief separates us from earthly things, and fills the heart with bitterness. These mag

nificent and monstrous plants are found in barbarous Africa: they grow upon rocks, in dry sand under a burning atmosphere. Some have leaves six feet long, and armed with long spires. From the centre of these leaves shoots up a slender stem covered with flowers.

Sister Sorrow! sit beside me,
Or, if I must wander, guide me:
Let me take thy hand in mine,
Cold alike are mine and thine.

Think not, Sorrow, that I hate thee,—
Think not I am frightened at thee,—
Thou art come for some good end;

I will treat thee as a friend.

R. M. Milnes.

And this is all I have left now,

Silence and solitude and tears;

The memory of a broken vow,

It

It

My blighted hopes, my wasted years!

may be that I shall forget my grief;

Anon.

It may be time has good in store for me;

may be that my heart will find relief

From sources now unknown. Futurity

May bear within its folds some hidden spring

From which will issue blessed streams; and yet
Whate'er of joy the coming year may bring,
The past the past—I never can forget.
Mrs. Hale.

Of comfort no man speak:
Let's talk of graves, of worms, of epitaphs:
Make dust our paper, and with rainy eyes
Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth.
Let's choose executors, and talk of wills;
And yet not so for what can we bequeath,
Save our deposed bodies in the ground?

Shakspeare.

Wormwood....Absence.

Wormwood is the bitterest of plants; and absence, according to La Fontaine, is the worst of evils. Those in whose anxious breasts the "flame divine" is burning, will agree with the French author in his assertion. To be absent from one we love is to carry a vacant chamber in the heart, which naught else can fill.

When thou shalt yield to memory's power,

And let her fondly lead thee o'er

The scenes that thou hast past before,
To absent friends and days gone by,—
Then should these meet thy pensive eye,
A true memento may they be

Of one whose bosom owes to thee

So many hours enjoyed in gladness,
That else perhaps had passed in sadness,
And many a golden dream of joy,
Untarnished and without alloy.
Oh, still my fervent prayer will be,

"Heaven's choicest blessings rest on thee."

Miss Gould.