Each life has some sweet summer-time,
Some perfect day of beauty;
When flowers of love and leaves of hope
Are twined around each duty.
But oh! the autumn-time will come,
Which fades each golden glory;
And life, when we are old and gray,
Seems but a sad, old story.
Winter Flowers.
The summer queen has many flowers
To deck her sunny hair,
And trailing grasses, pure and sweet,
To scent the heavy air;
And upward through the misty sky
There is a glory too,
Of floating clouds and rifts of gold
And depths of smiling blue.
Yet winter, too, can boast a wealth
Of flowers pure and white;
A kingly crown of frosted gems—
A wreath of sparkling light;
So bright and beautiful, indeed,
It were a wondrous sight
To see a world of fragile flowers
Sprung up within a night.
And sometimes there are cast'es, too,
Of glittering ice and snow,
Piled high upon our window-panes
'Neath curtains hanging low;
And they are like the castles fair
Our day-dreams build for aye;
A frozen mist that one warm breath
May quickly drive away.
And yet, how beautiful they are,
These flowers of our breath;
That bloom when not a leaf is left
To mourn the summer's death.
And oh! how wondrous are the things
That God has given the earth;
The day that brings to one a death
Smiles on another's birth.
Snow-Flakes.
I wonder what they are,
These pretty, wayward things,
That o'er the gloomy earth
The wind of heaven flings.
Each one a tiny star,
And each a perfect gem;
What magic in the art
That thus has fashioned them.