The past is the only dead thing that smells sweet.

The past is the only dead thing that smells sweet.

As well as any bloom upon a flower
I like the dust on the nettles, never lost
Except to prove the sweetness of a shower.

virtue can flower only when there is freedom.

Wild honey smells of freedom
The dust - of sunlight
The mouth of a young girl, like a violet
But gold - smells of nothing.

Sweet is the breath of vernal shower, The bee's collected treasures sweet, Sweet music's melting fall, but sweeter yet The still small voice of gratitude.

...the wild flowers blooming in hushed solitude
Start not at the whispering, 'tis but the breeze

A sweet content
Passing all wisdom or its fairest flower.

Flowers, the sole luxury which nature knew,
In Eden's pure and guiltless garden grew.[…]
Gay without toil, and lovely without art,
They spring to cheer the sense, and glad the heart.

The Flower that smells the sweetest is Shy and Lowly.

There, all is order and beauty only,
Splendor, peace, and pleasure.

This quiet Dust was Gentlemen and Ladies,
And Lads and Girls;
Was laughter and ability and sighing,
And frocks and curls.
This passive place a Summer's nimble mansion,
Where Bloom and Bees
Fulfilled their Oriental Circuit,
Then ceased like these.

Everything that's lovely is
But a brief, dreamy kind of delight.

Sweet as the tender fragrance that survives,
When martyred flowers breathe out their little lives,
Sweet as a song that once consoled our pain,
But never will be sung to us again,
Is they remembrance. Now the hour of rest
Hath come to thee. Sleep, darling: it is best.