Thomas Toke Lynch (1818-1871). Memorials of Theophilus Trinal, Student (1850). III. The Five Flowers. Alfred H. Miles, ed. 1907. The Sacred Poets of the Nineteenth Century

Alfred H. Miles, ed. The Sacred Poets of the Nineteenth Century. 1907.

Memorials of Theophilus Trinal, Student (1850).
III. The Five Flowers

By Thomas Toke Lynch (1818–1871)


“LOOK, love, on your bosom
Are flowers five;
But one has droop’d its head—
Four alone live.”

“So, late, in our nursery	5
Were children five:
One rests in grassy darkness—
Four alone live.”

“Your four flowers bloom freshly, love;
The fifth, not as they—	10
Its colour, and form, and odour,
Have passed away.
Take, then, from your bosom
The withered one:
Can the air now nourish it?	15
Can it feel the sun?”

“I have bound the five together
With a fresh willow leaf,
That grew large by a river,
As by flowing love, grief;	20
And they all will fall asunder
If I loose the tie;
So a love-clasp for living babes
Is a dead one’s memory.”

“Let the five flowers in your bosom, love	25
Its sweet shelter share;
As bound in one, within your heart,
Our five darlings are.
The dead make the living dearer;
And we will joy the more,	30
That the Giver, who has taken one,
Has left us four.”