Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry. 1904.

V. Trees: Flowers: Plants

Hymn to the Flowers

Horace Smith (1779–1849)

DAY-STARS! that ope your frownless eyes to twinkle

From rainbow galaxies of earth’s creation,

And dew-drops on her lonely altars sprinkle

As a libation.

Ye matin worshippers! who bending lowly

Before the uprisen sun, God’s lidless eye,

Throw from your chalices a sweet and holy

Incense on high.

Ye bright mosaics! that with storied beauty

The floor of Nature’s temple tessellate,

What numerous emblems of instructive duty

Your forms create!

’Neath cloistered boughs, each floral bell that swingeth

And tolls its perfume on the passing air,

Makes Sabbath in the fields, and ever ringeth

A call to prayer.

Not to the domes where crumbling arch and column

Attest the feebleness of mortal hand,

But to that fane, most catholic and solemn,

Which God hath planned;

To that cathedral, boundless as our wonder,

Whose quenchless lamps the sun and moon supply;

Its choir the wings and waves, its organ thunder,

Its dome the sky.

There, as in solitude and shade I wander

Through the green aisles, or stretched upon the sod,

Awed by the silence, reverently ponder

The ways of God,

Your voiceless lips, O flowers! are living preachers,

Each cup a pulpit, every leaf a book,

Supplying to my fancy numerous teachers

From loneliest nook.

Floral apostles! that in dewy splendor

“Weep without woe, and blush without a crime,”

O, may I deeply learn, and ne’er surrender

Your lore sublime!

“Thou wert not, Solomon, in all thy glory,

Arrayed,” the lilies cry, “in robes like ours!

How vain your grandeur! ah, how transitory

Are human flowers!”

In the sweet-scented pictures, heavenly artist,

With which thou paintest Nature’s wide-spread hall,

What a delightful lesson thou impartest

Of love to all!

Not useless are ye, flowers! though made for pleasure;

Blooming o’er field and wave, by day and night,

From every source your sanction bids me treasure

Harmless delight.

Ephemeral sages! what instructors hoary

For such a world of thought could furnish scope?

Each fading calyx a memento mori,

Yet fount of hope.

Posthumous glories! angel-like collection!

Upraised from seed or bulb interred in earth,

Ye are to me a type of resurrection

And second birth.

Were I in churchless solitudes remaining,

Far from all voice of teachers and divines,

My soul would find, in flowers of God’s ordaining,

Priests, sermons, shrines!