Hearing that one of his old friends was ill, Algy picked a specially bright posy to take to her. Distracted for a moment by a beautiful rainbow over the sea, he paused in his tree to rehearse this sonnet for her recovery:
Fair flower! that fall’n beneath the angry blast,
Which marks with wither’d sweets its fearful way,
I grieve to see thee on the low earth cast,
While beauty’s trembling tints fade fast away.
But who is she, that from the mountain’s head
Comes gaily on, cheering the child of earth?
The walks of woe bloom bright beneath her tread,
And Nature smiles with renovated mirth?
‘Tis Health! She comes: and, hark! the vallies ring,
And, hark! the echoing hills repeat the sound:
She sheds the new-blown blossoms of the spring,
And all their fragrance floats her footsteps round.
And, hark! she whispers in the zephyr’s voice,
Lift up thy head, fair floweret, and rejoice!
[Algy is rehearsing the sonnet To … On Her Recovery From Illness by the 19th century poet Thomas Gent.]
The Adventures of Algy 