Dear Editress
As you are a connoisseur in Valentines, I cannot help sending you the enclosed beautiful lines, which I have accidentally discovered to have been addressed last year to my sister Sarah. In offering these M.S. lines for the amusement of the Attic Society, I am guilty of no break of confidence, as the shy girl never would own the real cause of her predilection for everything Eastern.
Yes! when wintry blasts decay
And winter’s snows dissolve away
I love to see the snowdrop rise
First produce of the changing skies.
I love it for the promise given
Of warmer gales and brighter heaven
But who when ardent summer glows
Would change it for the blushing rose.
The fragrant woodbine gadding wild
Or May, the summer’s earliest child
Or e’en though niggard of perfume
The Thalmia’s bright and lavish bloom.
When flowers are rife, how oft ’tis seen
We slight the glossy evergreen
But when the feathery snows descend
We hail it as a long lost friend.
The earliest violet of the spring
Delicious odour seems to fling
But when a thousand scent the air
We scarcely feel the sweets they bear.
Hope bids the snowdrop fairer bloom
Hope lends the violets mild perfume
And hope in winter loves to see
The laurel bloom, her chosen tree.
She loves, like her, to see it last
And brave the frost, the rain, the blast
The comfort of the darkest hour
The brightest in the leafless bower.
E.C.U.