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Home  »  Poems of Places An Anthology in 31 Volumes  »  Three Flowers

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Italy: Vols. XI–XIII. 1876–79.

Rome, the Protestant Burial-Ground

Three Flowers

By Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1836–1907)

To Bayard Taylor

HEREWITH I send you three pressed withered flowers:

This one was white, with golden star; this, blue

As Capri’s cave; that, purple and shot through

With sunset-orange. Where the Duomo towers

In diamond air, and under hanging bowers

The Arno glides, this faded violet grew

On Landor’s grave; from Landor’s heart it drew

Its magic azure in the long spring hours.

Within the shadow of the Pyramid

Of Caius Cestius was the daisy found,

White as the soul of Keats in Paradise.

The pansy,—there were hundreds of them, hid

In the thick grass that folded Shelley’s mound,

Guarding his ashes with most lovely eyes.