Poems (Hoffman)/To My Pansies

by Martha Lavinia Hoffman

TO MY PANSIES.

Pansies, your drooping, sleepy heads low bending
Beneath the gentle moon's transforming beams,
While myriad stars their varied ways are wending,
  Tell me your dreams.

In deepest shades of yonder oak and willow
The breeze has rocked the baby-birds to sleep,
While o'er your lowly fringed and dewy pillow
  Moonbeams and shadows creep.

Have you no dreams, with your shy, tender faces
Turned from the silvery light,
While on your heads a thousand airy graces
  Their forms unite?

Do no weird fancies, steeped in thought and feeling,
That man with all his wisdom never guessed,
Come through the shadowy moonlight softly stealing
  To charm your rest?

Ah! willful pansies, I would guess their meaning
And steal some of their honeyed sweets away;
But keep your pretty secrets, pansy dreaming,
  An elfin might betray.

On yonder hills the blushing Bride of Morning
Scatters the mists beneath her sunny smile;
The few faint stars her cloudy robes adorning
  Your eyes beguile.

Awake, my pansies, choristers are singing,
On golden wings their artless notes are borne;
Lo! from your leafy buds in rapture springing
  Ye greet the morn.

Each tiny face wears some distinct expression
Stamped in its royal dyes,
Linked with a universal, shy confession
  Of sweet surprise.

Into the heavens your wondering eyes are staring
As if to penetrate their burning lamp
While mosses, round your feet, fresh dewdrops wearing,
  Lie cool and damp.

Into each beauteous face I gaze with pleasure,
That no distrust attends;
I find in you, what I have learned to treasure,
  Unchanging friends.

Sweet sympathy, that boon of earth's denying,
That surest balm for care,
Wafting from upper fonts your wants supplying,
  Ye sweetly share.

Ye are to me a silent inspiration
With voiceless teachings blent,
I learn of you (though in the lowliest station)
  To be content.