I am a parcel of vain strivings
By a chance bond together,
Dangling this way and that, their
Were made so loose and wide,
Methinks,
For milder weather.
A bunch of violets without their roots,
And sorrel intermixed,
Encircled by a wisp of
Once coiled about their shoots,
The
By which I'm fixed.
A nosegay which Time clutched from
Those fair Elysian fields,
With weeds and broken stems, in haste,
Doth make the rabble
That
The day he yields.
And here I bloom for a short hour unseen,
Drinking my juices up,
With no root in the
To keep my branches green,
But
In a bare cup.
Some tender buds were left upon my
In mimicry of life,
But ah! the children will not know,
Till time has withered them,
The
With which they're rife.
But now I see I was not plucked for naught,
And after in life's
Of glass set while I might survive,
But by a kind hand
To a strange place.
That stock thus thinned will soon redeem its hours,
And by another year,
Such as God knows, with freer air,
More fruits and fairer
Will bear,
While I droop here.
