I.
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 asleep
In her arms an hour ago.
With the air which is her breath-
Her soft and delicate breath-
Over them murmuring low!-
On their lips her sweet kiss lingers yet,
And their cheeks with her tender tears are wet.
For she weeps- that gentle mother weeps-
(As morn and night her watch she keeps,
With a yearning heart and a passionate care)
To see the young things grow so fair;
She weeps- for love she weeps;
And the dews are the tears she weeps
From the well of a mother's love!-

II.
Ye have a world of light,
Where love in the loved rejoices;
But the blind girl's home is the House of Night,
And its beings are empty voices.
As one in the realm below,
I stand by the streams of woe!
I hear the vain shadows glide,
I feel their soft breath at my side.
And I thirst the loved forms to see,
And I stretch my fond arms around,
And I catch but a shapeless sound,
For the living are ghosts to me.-
Come buy - come buy? -
Hark! how the sweet things sigh
(For they have a voice like ours),
'The breath of the blind girl closes
The leaves of the saddening roses-
We are tender, we sons of light,
We shrink from this child of night;
From the grasp of the blind girl free us-
We yearn for the eyes that see us-
We are for night too gay,
In your eyes we behold the day-
O buy - O buy the flowers!'-