Frances Anne Kemble

27 November 1809 - 15 January 1893 / London, England

Sonnet On An Edelweiss

Where huge rock buttresses bear up the clouds,
With all their floating reservoirs of rain;
Where the wide winding sheet of snow enshrouds
The glacier's sapphire clefts and glittering plain,
This flow'r is found—the well-nam'd Edelweiss.
Of frozen beds of foam and fields of ice,
Soft downy blossom—type of purity,
Of courage high and low humility,
Fast-rooted Love clinging to dire mischance.
Faith fixed as Fate defying circumstance,
O'er the unstable seas thee do I send,
Star of the steadfast mountains, to the friend
In whom thy loftiest, lowliest graces meet.
Bloom, Edelweiss, at her beloved feet!
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