Poems MacCarthy, Florence Denis

194
The beauteous queen of all the flowers,
Whose faintest sigh is like a spell,
Was born in Eden's sinless bowers
Long ere our primal parents fell.
There in a perfect form she grew,
Nor felt decay, nor tasted death;
Heaven was reflected in her hue,
And heaven's own odours filled her breath.
And ere the angel of the sword
Drove thence the founders of our race,
They knelt before him, and implor'd
Some relic of that radiant place:
Some relic that, while time would last,
Should make men weep their fatal sin;
Proof of the glory that was past,
And type of that they yet might win.
The angel turn'd, and ere his hands
The gates of bliss for ever close,
Pluck'd from the fairest tree that stands
Within heaven's walls--the peerless rose.
And as he gave it unto them,
Let fall a tear upon its leaves--
The same celestial liquid gem
We oft perceive on dewy eves.
Grateful the hapless twain went forth,
The golden portals backward whirl'd,
Then first they felt the biting north,
And all the rigour of this world.
Then first the dreadful curse had power
To chill the life-streams at their source,
Till e'en the sap within the flower
Grew curdled in its upward course.