I am a parcel of vain strivings tied 
By a chance bond together, 
Dangling this way and that, their links 
Were made so loose and wide, 
Methinks, 
For milder weather. 

A bunch of violets without their roots, 
And sorrel intermixed, 
Encircled by a wisp of straw 
Once coiled about their shoots, 
The law 
By which I'm fixed. 

A nosegay which Time clutched from out 
Those fair Elysian fields, 
With weeds and broken stems, in haste, 
Doth make the rabble rout 
That waste 
The day he yields. 

And here I bloom for a short hour unseen, 
Drinking my juices up, 
With no root in the land 
To keep my branches green, 
But stand 
In a bare cup. 

Some tender buds were left upon my stem 
In mimicry of life, 
But ah! the children will not know, 
Till time has withered them, 
The woe 
With which they're rife. 

But now I see I was not plucked for naught, 
And after in life's vase 
Of glass set while I might survive, 
But by a kind hand brought 
Alive 
To a strange place. 

That stock thus thinned will soon redeem its hours, 
And by another year, 
Such as God knows, with freer air, 
More fruits and fairer flowers 
Will bear, 
While I droop here.