The Blind Flower-girl's Song

I.
Buy my flowers — O buy — I pray!
The blind girl comes from afar;
If the earth be as fair as I hear them say,
These flowers her children are!
Do they her beauty keep?
They are fresh from her lap, I know;
For I caught them fast asleep
In her arms an hour ago.
With the air which is her breath—
Her soft and delicate breath—
Over them murmuring low!—
On their lips her sweet kiss lingers yet,
And their cheeks with her tender tears are wet.
For she weeps- that gentle mother weeps—
(As morn and night her watch she keeps,
With a yearning heart and a passionate care)
To see the young things grow so fair;
She weeps- for love she weeps;
And the dews are the tears she weeps
From the well of a mother's love!—

II.
Ye have a world of light,
Where love in the loved rejoices;
But the blind girl's home is the House of Night,
And its beings are empty voices.
As one in the realm below,
I stand by the streams of woe!
I hear the vain shadows glide,
I feel their soft breath at my side.
And I thirst the loved forms to see,
And I stretch my fond arms around,
And I catch but a shapeless sound,
For the living are ghosts to me.—
Come buy — come buy? —
Hark! how the sweet things sigh
(For they have a voice like ours),
"The breath of the blind girl closes
The leaves of the saddening roses—
We are tender, we sons of light,
We shrink from this child of night;
From the grasp of the blind girl free us—
We yearn for the eyes that see us—
We are for night too gay,
In your eyes we behold the day—
O buy — O buy the flowers!"—