THE LUCK FLOWER.

[Curious Myths of the Middle Ages, Series II. p. 137, 1868.]

A MEADOW tremulous with dew,

A lifted firmament all blue,

And bushes shedding many a tear-
But all of joy-in the morning clear;
Bending bladed grasses fret

In the light wind, dripping wet;
Buttercups adorn the floor

With their goblets brimming o'er;
Purple orchis lines the hedge;
Marigold gleams in the sedge;

Robin shakes his jaunty tatters,
And the dewdrops from them scatters,
Breaking through the gossamer threads.
Dandelions' globous heads

Seem the gentle breeze to pray,
"Puff my feathered seeds away!'

Chafers to the leaves that cling
Strive to dry the draggled wing;
Admirals on bark of oak

Tarry till a sunny stroke

O'er their scarlet stripes and rings
Drinks the water from their wings.
Ladybirds with spots of black
On the rounded russet back,

Dash about, or linger sipping
Bells with fragrant honey dripping.

Now the redstart on a spray
Pipes, the shrike in jet and grey

Answers, and from throbbing throat
Bursts the throstle's bubbling note.

Forth strode Walter staff in hand,
Singing, straying through the land,
With a spirit light and gay
As each forest bird that day.

With the flower-heads he played,

As he through the meadows strayed; Then he turned towards a hill,

Following a tinkling rill.

Where the little pathway wended Walter there the slope ascended, Towards the mountain grey that towers O'er that vale of meads and flowers ; Thinking, 'Now with sturdy strain

I the mountain-top may gain.'

With a cry of joy he stopped
Sudden, on his knee he dropped,
Peering underneath a braid

Of red roses, in whose shade,
Where through mosses ever weeping
Are the whispering waters creeping.
Thence the youth exulting drew
A flowret of the turquoise hue;
On his breast the plant he set,

With a feeling of regret
That, to glad another eye,
Friend or parent was not by.

Little then young Walter knew
The virtue of that blossom blue :
He the Flower of Luck had got-
The Wishing Wort, Forget-me-not,

That blooms but for a single day

When summers seven have slipped away.

Not an iron bolt or lock,

Not an adamantine rock,

Can resist that flowret's shock;

But before that herb of day

Stoutest bars and chains give way,

And the gaping rock reveals

Treasures which its womb conceals.

It can ope the prison cell,
Burst the barriers of Hell;
Ay, to Heaven's gates applied,
Starts the crystal bar aside,

And the valves reel open wide!

Now himself the youth addrest,

With that blossom on his breast,

To the task of the ascent,

Forward on his ash-staff bent.

Higher up the mountain flank,
Through the vegetation rank,
Thus his pathway Walter broke
Through a coppice wood of oak ;
Where the wild-dove echoes woke.

Then beneath a birchen shade,
Through a fragrant ferny glade,
Upward still a passage frayed,
On towards a rocky height
Where the saxifrages white
Patterned out a lace of light;
Up a rough and shattered edge
To a verdant cushioned ledge,
Where the sun was busy drying
Primulas that had been crying.
There he stood before a scar

Striking up, the way to bar

To all further climbing.

From its rugged face it flung
Echoes of some bells that rung,

In the valley chiming.

Thus the youth before it stood,
In distressed and doubting mood,
Seeking cranny, shelf or root,

Grasp for hand, support for foot,
Caught a tuft of purple stock,
Grappling, bosom to the rock.

Sudden, with a hollow moan,

As the Luck Flower touched the stone,