OW fresh, O Lord, how sweet and clean
Are Thy returns! e'en as the flowers in Spring;
To which, besides their own demean,
The late-past frosts tributes of pleasure bring.
Grief melts away
Like snow in May,
As if there were no such cold thing.
Who would have thought my shrivelled heart
Could have recovered greenness? It was gone
Quite under ground; as flowers depart
To see their mother-root, when they have blown :
Where they, together,
All the hard weather,
Dead to the world, keep house unknown.
O that I once past changing were,
Fast in thy Paradise, where no flower can wither!
Many a Spring I shoot up fair
Offering at heaven, growing and groaning thither.
Nor doth my flower
Want a Spring shower;
My sins and I joining together.
And now in age I bud again,
After so many deaths I live and write :
I once more smell the dew and rain,
And relish versing. Oh! my only Light,
It cannot be
That I am he
On whom Thy tempests fell at night!
These are Thy wonders, Lord of love!
To make us see we are but flowers that glide:
Which when we once can find and prove,
Thou hast a garden for us where to bide.
Who would be more,
Swelling through store,
Forfeit their Paradise by their pride.
HE gorse is yellow on the heath,
The banks with speedwell flowers are gay,
The oaks are budding, and beneath,
The hawthorn soon will bear the wreath,
The silver wreath of May.
The welcome guest of settled Spring,
The swallow, too, is come at last;
Just at sunset, when thrushes sing,
I saw her dash with rapid wing,
And hailed her as she passed.
Come, Summer visitant, attach
To my reed roof your nest of clay,
And let my ear your music catch,
Low twittering underneath the thatch,
At the grey dawn of day.
By cool Siloam's shady rill
The lily must decay,
The rose that blooms beneath the hill
Must shortly fade away.
And soon, too soon, the wintry hour
Of man's maturer age,
Will shake the soul with sorrow's power,
And stormy passions rage!
O Thou, whose infant feet were found
Within Thy Father's shrine !
Whose years, with changeless virtue crowned,
Were all alike Divine:
Dependent on Thy bounteous breath,
We seek Thy grace alone,
In childhood, manhood, age, and death,
To keep us still Thine own.
The All-beneficent! I bless Thy name
That Thou hast mantled the green earth with flowers,
Linking our hearts to Nature. By the love
Of their wild blossoms, our young footsteps first
Into her deep recesses are beguiled
Her minster-cells, dark glen and forest bower,
Where, thrilling with its earliest sense of Thee,
Amidst the low religious whisperings,
And shivery leaf-sounds of the solitude,
The spirit wakes to worship, and is made
Thy living temple. By the breath of flowers
Thou callest us, from city throngs and cares,
Back to the woods, the birds, the mountain streams,
That sing of Thee;-back to free childhood's heart
Fresh with the dews of tenderness. Thou bidd'st
The lilies of the field with placid smile
Reprove man's feverish strivings, and infuse
Through his worn soul a more unworldly life,
With their soft holy breath. Thou hast not left
His purer nature, with its fine desires,
Uncared for in this universe of Thine!
The glowing rose attests it, the beloved
Of poet-hearts, touched by their fervent dreams
With spiritual light, and made a source
Of heaven-ascending thoughts. Even to faint age
Thou lend'st the vernal bliss: the old man's eye
Falls on the kindling blossoms, and his soul
Remembers youth and love, and hopefully
Turns unto Thee, who call'st earth's buried germs
From dust to splendour; as the mortal seed
Shall, at Thy summons, from the grave spring up
To put on glory, to be girt with power,
And filled with immortality. Receive
Thanks, blessings, love, for these Thy lavish boons,
And, most of all, their heavenward influences,
O Thou that gav'st us flowers!
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