MY FLOWER ROOM

My Flower Room is such a little place,

Scarce twenty feet by nine; yet in that space

I have met God; yea, many a radiant hour

Have talked with Him, the All-Embracing-Cause,

About His laws.

And He has shown me, in each vine and flower

Such miracles of power

That day by day this Flower Room of mine

Has come to be a shrine.

Fed by the self-same soil and atmosphere

Pale, tender shoots appear

Rising to greet the light in that sweet room.

One speeds to crimson bloom;

One slowly creeps to unassuming grace;

One climbs, one trails;

One drinks the light and moisture;

One exhales.

Up through the earth together, stem by stem

Two plants push swiftly in a floral race;

Till one sends forth a blossom like a gem;

And one gives only fragrance

In a seed

So small it scarce is felt within the hand.

Lie hidden such delights

Of scents and sights,

When by the elements of Nature freed,

As Paradise must have at its command.

From shapeless roots and ugly bulbous things

What gorgeous beauty springs!

Such infinite variety appears

A hundred artists in a hundred years

Could never copy from the floral world

The marvels that in leaf and bud lie curled.

Nor could the most colossal mind of man

Create one little seed of plant or vine

Without assistance from the First Great Plan;

Without the aid divine.

Who but a God

Could draw from light and moisture, heat and cold,

And fashion in earth's mould,

A multitude of blooms to deck one sod?

Who but a God!

Not one man knows

Just why the bloom and fragrance of the rose

Or how its tints were blent;

Or why the white Camelia without scent

Up through the same soil grows;

Or how the daisy and the violet

And blades of grass first on wild meadows met.

Not one, not one man knows;

The wisest but SUPPOSE.

This Flower Room of mine

Has come to be a shrine;

And I go hence

Each day with larger faith and reverence.