And the love my heart would speak,
I will fold in the lily's rim,
That the lips of the blossom more pure and meet
May offer it up to Him.
See what a beautiful conception! Her heart was full of desire to lift her prayer of thankfulness, praise, and supplication up to God, but feeling her own inadequacy and incompleteness, and realizing the perfect purity of the delicate lily, she felt that she might wrap her prayer up in the rim of the flower and thus make it acceptable to the God of purity and immaculate whiteness.
There never was a flower yet that was not a miracle to the observing eye and thinking mind. How does it shape all that beauty? From whence does it gain those delicate tints, tones, and colors? From what laboratory does it extract those exquisitely delicate and delicious odors?
Oh, wake up to the beauty of the common grass, the common flowers, the common trees. Open your eyes to see, open your hearts to feel, cultivate your hunger for these common things and then absorb and assimilate them.
But the flowers and trees are but merely a part of the great world of Nature from which one may absorb things beautiful and grand.
People who live by the sea or by an inland lake have wonderful opportunities for the observation of grandeur, sublimity, and beauty. Joaquin Miller once stood by the seashore and wrote these words of poetry:
The sun lay molten in the sea