SONNET.
TO THE STRAWBERRY.
The strawberry blooms upon its lowly bed:
Plant of my native soil! The lime may fling
More potent fragrance on the zephyr's wing,
The milky cocoa richer juices shed,
The white guava lovelier blossoms spread:
But not, like thee, to fond remembrance bring
The vanish'd hours of life's enchanting spring;
Short calendar of joys for ever fled!
Thou bidst the scenes of childhood rise to view,
The wild wood path which fancy loves to trace,
Where, veil'd in leaves, thy fruit of rosy hue,
Lurk'd on its pliant stem with modest grace.
But, ah! when thought would later years renew,
Alas! successive sorrows crowd the space.
"But perhaps the most charming spot of this enclosure was that which was
called the Repose of Virginia. At the foot of the rock which bore the name
of the Discovery of Friendship, is a nook, from whence issues a fountain,
forming, near its source, a little spot of marshy soil in the midst of a
field of rich grass. At the time Margaret was delivered of Paul, I made her
a present of an Indian cocoa which had been given me, and which she planted
on the border of this fenny ground, in order that the tree might one day
serve to mark the epocha of her son's birth. Madame de la Tour planted
another cocoa, with the same view, at the birth of Virginia. Those fruits
produced two cocoa trees, which formed all the records of the two families:
one was called the tree of Paul, the other the tree of Virginia.
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