Autumn Flowers

The flowers of Spring, they come in sweet succession.
Snowdrop and crocus, and mezereon, thick
Studded with blossom upon leafless stick,
And the young ivy, ceaseless in progression ;
They triumph in their hour of brief possession.
Then Summer comes, with her voluptuous rose,
And sweet carnation in half-blown repose ;
The plant where pious minds discern the passion,
The death by which we live. But I was born
When the good year was like a man of fifty,
When the wild crabtree show'd a naked thorn,
And tall brown fern disguised the red deer's horn ;
Like meats upon a board, august yet thrifty.
Large flowers blaze out at intervals forlorn.