And I think,—Do you remember
In the life that’s yours to-day,
That garden and its glamour,
And the time that would not stay!
Oh, amid the faces around you,
Does one face never arise
And for a moment hold you
With the old spell of its eyes?
Ah no! You men forget us,
And we!—we must be dumb.
And life’s June goes for ever
And the snows of winter come.
A MESSAGE
In a little broken flower-pot
High up on a window-sill,
’Mid grime and gloom and squalor,
Grew a golden daffodil.
It seem’d in the gloom of the alley
Like a sunbeam that had strayed
Out from the light of heaven
Into a land of shade.
And close in a cage beside it
A skylark sweetly sang
Till all the narrow alley
With its wild rapture rang.
And one poor weary sinner
Paused, as her wild eyes turned
To where, on its humble altar,
The flower-flame upward burned.
And something stirred in her bosom;
’Twas the heart that had long lain dead,
As the bird’s song rose from its prison
In the shadow overhead.
God’s angels are birds and flowers,
And oh! methinks they preach
At times with a power and pathos
We men can never reach.