from his 1834 novel The Last Days of Pompeii 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 asleepIn her arms an hour ago, With the air which is her breath— Her soft and delicate breath— Over them murmuring low!— Ye have a world of light, Where love in the loved rejoices; But the blind girl's home is th

Fair was she as a poet’s dream, With her sunny curls & her eyes’ soft beam— From her parted lips low words were stealing, The innocent thoughts of her heart revealing. “Oh! bright is the bonnie blue sky to-day, And I must dress me & hie away; The bells are ringing so joyously It seems as though they were calling me. And Willie, dear Willie, he will be there With his happy face & his manly air; The flowers he loves to-day I’ll wear, And wreathe their buds in my golden hair.” “

Bring flowers, fresh flowers, for the bride to wear? They were born to blush in her shining hair, She is leaving the home of her childhood's mirth; She hath bid farewell to her father's hearth; Her place is now by another's side-- Bring Flowers for the locks of the fair young bride!

Beautiful boy! how is time away— The tones you hear in your childish play? With that enchanting look you may vainly seek To know if thy solemn lute can speak! But strike the chords, and the listening ear A gush of strange sweet sounds shall hear— Music far sweeter than hymns shall rise When the first star breaks in the western skies! Catharine Allan

Published Love’s Calendar, Lays of the Hudson, and Other Poems (1850) I’ve trod thy mountain paths, thy valleys deep, Through mazy thickets, and through tangled heath; I’ve climb’d thy piled-up rocks, from steep to steep, And gazed with rapture on the scene beneath. The noble plain that lies embosom’d there, The jutting headlands in thy mimic bay— The stream, impatient of his curb’d career, Sweeping through mighty mountains far away, His bosom burnish’d by the setting sun, Wh