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What delight in some sweet spot
Combining love with garden plot,
At once to cultivate one's flowers
And one's epistolary powers!
Growing one's own choice words and fancies
In orange tubs, and beds of pansies;
One's sighs, and passionate declarations,
In odorous rhetoric of carnations;
Seeing how far one's stocks will reach,
Taking due care one's flowers of speech
To guard from blight as well as bathos,
And watering every day one's pathos !
A letter comes, just gathered. We
Dote on its tender brilliancy,
Inhale its delicate expressions
Of balm and pea, and its confessions
Made with as sweet a maiden's blush
As ever morn bedewed on bush :
(T is in reply to one of ours,
Made of the most convincing flowers.)

Then, after we have kissed its wit,
And heart, in water putting it
(To keep its remarks fresh), go round
Our little eloquent plot of ground,
And with enchanted hands compose
Our answer, - all of lily and rose,
Of tuberose and of violet,
And little darling (mignonette);
Of look at me and call me to you
(Words, that while they greet, go through you);
Of thoughts, of flames, forget-me-not,
Bridewort, in short, the whole blest lot
Of vouchers for a lifelong kiss,
And literally, breathing bliss!

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LEIGH HUNT.

THE BIRTH OF PORTRAITURE.

As once a Grecian maiden wove

Her garland mid the summer bowers, There stood a youth, with eyes of love,

To watch her while she wreathed the flowers. The youth was skilled in painting's art, But ne'er had studied woman's brow, Nor knew what magic hues the heart Can shed o'er Nature's charm, till now.

CHORUS.

Blest be Love, to whom we owe All that's fair and bright below.

His hand had pictured many a rose,

And sketched the rays that lit the brook; But what were these, or what were those,

To woman's blush, to woman's look? "Oh ! if such magic power there be,

This, this," he cried, "is all my prayer,

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