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Botany-Bay Flowers

GOD of this Planet! for the name best fits
The purblind view, which men of this "dim spot"
Can take of THEE, the GOD Of Suns and Spheres!
What desert forests, and what barren plains,
Lie unexplor'd by European eye,
In what our Fathers call'd the Great South Land!
Ev'n in those tracts, which we have visited,
Tho' thousands of thy vegetable works
Have, by the hand of Science (as 'tis call'd)
Been gather'd and dissected, press'd and dried,
Till all their blood and beauty are extinct;
And nam'd in barb'rous Latin, men's surnames,
With terminations of the Roman tongue;
Yet tens of thousands have escap'd the search,
The decimation, the alive-impaling,
Nick-naming of GOD'S creatures -- 'scap'd it all.
Still fewer (perhaps none) of all these Flowers
Have been by Poet sung. Poets are few.
And Botanists are many, and good cheap.

When first I landed on AUSTRALIA'S Shore,
(I neither Botanist nor Poet truly,
But less a Seeker after Facts than Truth),
A Flower gladden'd me above the rest,
Shap'd trumpet-like, which from palmy stalk
Hung clust'ring, hyacinthine, crimson red
Melting to white. Botanic Science calls
The plant epacris grandiflora, gives
Its class, description, habitat, then draws
A line. The Bard of Truth would moralize
The Flower's beauty, which caught first my eye;
But, having liv'd the circle of the year,
I found (and then he'd sing in Beauty's praise)
This the sole plant that never ceas'd to bloom.
Nor here would stop: -- at length first love and fair,

And fair and sweet, and sweet and constant, pall,
(Alas, for poor Humanity!) and then
Then new, the pretty, and the unexpected,
Ensnare the fancy. Thus it was with me,
When first I spied the Flowret in the grass,
Which forms the subject of this humble Song,
And (treason to my wedded Flower) cried: --
Th' Australian "fringed Violet"
Shall henceforward be my pet!
Oh! had this Flow'r been seen by him
Who call'd Europa's "violets dim
Sweeter than lids of juno's eyes,"
He had not let this touch suffice,
But had pronounc'd it (I am certain)

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