Meekly their buds in the heavy rain bending,
Softly their hues with the mellow light blending,
Gratefully welcoming sunlight and showers:—
Live like the flowers!
Freely their sweets on the wild breezes flinging,
While in their depths are new odors upspringing:—
(Blessedness twofold of Love's holy dowers,)
Live like the flowers!
Gladly they heed Who their brightness has given:
Blooming on earth, look they all up to heaven;
Humbly look up from their loveliest bowers:—
Live like the flowers!
Peacefully droop they when autumn is sighing;
Breathing mild fragrance around them in dying,
Sleep they in hope of Spring's freshening hours:—
Die like the flowers!
The prose-poem that follows was put into a rhymed version by several unknown hands in periodicals of that day, so that at last I also wrote one, in self-defense, to claim my own waif. But it was a prose-poem that I intended it to be, and I think it is better so.
"BRING BACK MY FLOWERS."
On the bank of a rivulet sat a rosy child. Her lap was filled with flowers, and a garland of rose-buds was twined around her neck. Her face was as radiant as the sunshine that fell upon it, and her voice was as clear as that of the bird which warbled at her side.
The little stream went singing on, and with every gush of its music the child lifted a flower in her dimpled hand, and, with a merry laugh, threw it upon the water. In her glee she forgot that her treasures were growing less, and with the swift motion of childhood, she flung them upon the sparkling tide, until every bud and blossom had disappeared.
Then, seeing her loss, she sprang to her feet, and bursting into tears, called aloud to the stream, "Bring back my flowers!" But the stream danced along, regardless of her sorrow; and as it bore the blooming burden away, her words came back in a taunting echo, along its reedy margin. And long after, amid the wailing of the breeze and the fitful bursts of childish grief, was heard the fruitless cry, "Bring back my flowers!"
Merry maiden, who art idly wasting the precious moments so bountifully bestowed upon thee, see in the thoughtless child an emblem of thyself! Each moment is a perfumed flower. Let its fragrance be diffused in blessings around thee, and ascend as sweet incense to the beneficent Giver!