On Mignonette

Stranger, these little flowers are sweet
If you will leave them at your feet,
Enjoying like yourself the breeze,
And kist by butterflies and bees;
But if you snap the fragile stem
The vilest thyme outvalues them.
Nor place nor flower would I select
To make you serious and reflect.

This heaviness was always shed
Upon the drooping rose's head.
Yet now perhaps your mind surveys
Some village maid, in earlier days,
Of charms thus lost, of life thus set.
Ah bruise not then my Mignionette!