Written in a Green-House

Why are your scents so faint, your stems so slight?
Why are your languid leaves outnumbered so
By wealth of bell and blossom? Would ye go
Back to Pacific lands or eastern light
From whence ye came, bringing your juicy powers
To heal and lull? But ailing man hath need
In his sad lot of a botanic creed;
So ye are summoned from your thousand bowers,
Unwilling Congress from the world of flowers!
And now the bard, wise idler, here may pore
O'er the wild learning and the uncouth store
Of studious boyhood's desultory hours,
Rifling all books of travel, far and near,
To shape a home for each exotic here.