Hollyhocks

Old-fashioned flowers! I love them all:

The morning-glories on the wall,

The pansies in their patch of shade,

The violets, stolen from a glade,

The bleeding hearts and columbine,

Have long been garden friends of mine;

But memory every summer flocks

About a clump of hollyhocks.

The mother loved them years ago;

Beside the fence they used to grow,

And though the garden changed each year

And certain blooms would disappear

To give their places in the ground

To something new that mother found,

Some pretty bloom or rosebush rare —

The hollyhocks were always there.

It seems but yesterday to me

She led me down the yard to see

The first tall spires, with bloom aflame,

And taught me to pronounce their name.

And year by year I watched them grow,

The first flowers I had come to know.

And with the mother dear I'd yearn

To see the hollyhocks return.

The garden of my boyhood days

With hollyhocks was kept ablaze;

In all my recollections they

In friendly columns nod and sway;

And when to-day their blooms I see,

Always the mother smiles at me;

The mind's bright chambers, life unlocks

Each summer with the hollyhocks.