And as silently steal away.”

USELESS?

Flowers are poetry; poetry, flowers:

Each is a clod of earth in bloom.

Useful? Aye, to the heart!—to illume

The rain-drop drip from the wing of the hours.

Both are the love of the great dear God

Set in the sod of the new child-earth,

Set in the heart at the earth-child’s birth,

Soul of the clay, and bloom of the clod.