On The Breast Of Mi-Lady

With the breath of spring on the wooded slope,

     Or down in the glen’s sweet solitude,

Where the bluebirds sing of the waking spring,

     The scent of arbutus fills the wood.

They push their petals of seashell hue

     Above the leaves of a bygone year,

And the finder cries in his glad surprise,

     “What a fairy land is there!”

On the breast of mi-lady in the town

     These wanderers find a place,

Or she decks her hair with the petals rare,

     A duo of peerless grace.

O, sweet is the arbutus down in the wood,

     Peering above the dead leaves brown,

But sweetest of all is the Mayflower small,

     On the breast of mi-lady in town.

Dec. 29, 1901

Arbutus is a genus of at least 14 species of flowering plants in the family Ericaceae, native to warm temperate regions of the Mediterranean, western Europe, and North America. The name is borrowed from Latin, where it referred to A. unedo.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbutus