Ernest Charles Jones

The Life of a Flower

AMID the bright'ning glories of the earth,
I watched a humble floweret from its birth;
'Twas a pale blossom and a simple one
As e'er held converse with the godlike sun—
Yet e'en on that descends the beam divine,
And drinks the offering from its perfumed shrine.
    Up sprung to life its small and tender form,
Amid a short pause of a vernal storm;
When spring once smiled between an azure rent,
Like hope thro' cares, 'mid winter's discontent.
Forth from its dark abode the young flower strove,
As though 'twere kindred to the light above,
And heaven's own beauty, like a magnet true,
Called that of earth into existence too.
Short time it raised in peace its tender head,
Smiling to God from forth its dewy bed;
Breathed the first sigh, whose perfume sweetly fell
As though an angel prayed within its cell;
And pilgrims passed, and passing paused to say,
"How fair a flower to cheer a wanderer's way!"
They lingered still, when came the chilly storm,
And drove the worldlings from that shrinking form;
Then, true to earthly law, approached to wreak
Its wildest wrath upon the fair and weak.
Then swept the frosty mist, then rose the blast,
And pitying snow entombed it as it passed,
While flying Winter placed in iron hour
An icicle where spring had raised a flower.

    The skies were cold—the fields all bare,
And bare the trees, though the buds lurked there;
The birds were silent, the waves were still,
Those voices of forest and river and hill;
And the snow o'er the fountains and flowers was spread,
Like a marble gravestone for the fairy-like dead;
But where was that gentle young child of the sun,
Its sweetest, its first, its most beautiful one?
For what is so dear, howe'er simple its bloom,
As the first bud that brightens the path of our doom?
    The hours came thronging, the hours they passed,
On their chariots of sleet, storm and sunshine, and blast;
They drove over rock, plain and forest, and wave,
And each furrowed deep o'er that desolate grave;
Or with footsteps all careless above it they trod,
Nor reck'd of the pale bloom that liv'd in the sod;
And mortals forgot it had ever been there,
Nor talked they, nor thought, of that visitor fair;
They were thinking too much of what summer would bring,
To cherish the delicate gifts of the spring.
The hours passed by, and the sun shone again,
Writing in letters of green on the plain,
With finger of fire in tracery slow,
Promise of Summer on pages of snow.
    The wanderer came with his wearisome lot,
And ever as sweet on the self-same spot,
The pale flower waving its beautiful head,
Like an angel returning to man from the dead,
With its bloom and its perfume still grew on his way,
And forced him to pause while it wooed him to stay.
    The skies grew deeper, more dark and more bright,
More dazzling by day and more dreamy by night;
The Sun, like a god to his throne, mounted higher,
Struck the green earth with a sceptre of fire,
And quaffed from the river, the lake and the main,
As tho' they were goblets for godheads to drain.
The hills were parched and rent all o'er,
Like thirst-parted lips on a sandy shore;
The streams and the rivers were tarried and dried—
The veins of the earth that had shrunk o'er their tide;
And a brown burning ball, through the desert of space
The earth still rolled on its endless race.
The leaves fell dead from the motionless trees,
Straight and lank, for there came no breeze
To bear them soft with hand unseen
And sighing song to their grass-graves green.
The verdure was dust and the water was air,
The sun stood throned on a desert bare,
And the pale flower drooped its meek, delicate head,
Like a dying child on a lonely bed.—
The wanderer shrunk from the sun's assault,
'Neath cave and cleft, and arch and vault,
And saw the hot death of the world around,
The burning sky and the burning ground.—
And mortals forgot 'mid their pain and their care,
That the beautiful stranger had ever been there.

    The hours they passed on their fiery flight,
Driving their chariots through furrows of light,
Till a trumpet-tone shattered the air of the south,
And a banner of black overshadowed the drought.
'Twas the Thunder, who called on the wind and the rain,
And led his loud armies from highland to plain,
Till leaping with joy at his fiery glance,
The round rain came down with a festal dance.
And the steaming earth quickened its inward life
To gaze on the sun and the thunder's strife.
Then the triumph-note of the victor swells,
His deep drums rolling through the dells,
And waveth his banner all shattered and dun,
Right in the face of the sinking sun,
While with flashes of lightning in solemn array,
On a rainbow-bridge he marches away.

    'Twas then the earth at still of night
Put forth its all of fair and bright:
Fountain and flower from stone and sod—
Myriads of altars to one great God.
But first of all, and still the same,
Like a buried dream that floweret came;
Like a poet's thought, that long had passed,
Returning from its heaven at last;
As pale, as fair, as sweet of hue,
With perfumed cup and crown of dew.
It came to men's hearts with a throb of pain,
Like a tale long forgotten remembered again—
A something familiar that once had been dear,
That we greet with a sigh, that we leave with a tear.

    But over the earth the rich autumn had rolled,
As a guerdon of wealth, its deep colours of gold.
With the fruit on the tree and the grain on the ground,
The vintage above and the harvest around,
The reaper with sickle, the vintner with shear,
To gather and garner the wealth of the year—
Man, who forgot his own heart in that hour,
Was too busy with fruit to remember the flower.
    And once again a change came there,
A shade on the earth and a chill on the air;
Dead from the mother-tree fell leaf by leaf,
While she stood o'er their graves with a statue-like grief;
And over the mountain the hoar frost spread,
Like snows of age on a furrowed head;
The streams crept slow with a hound-like moan;
The lakes were turning as fixed as stone;
All seemed dead but the cloud and the wind—
And where they had passed they left ruin behind.
Then, when all was gone and drear,
The harvest housed, the stubble sear,
With no more to hope in that desolate hour—
The wanderer thought of the young spring-flower:
And forth he went o'er the lonely plain,
Faltering on through a shroud of rain.
His cheek was hollow and wan of hue,
And his steps were many where they'd been few!
His brow was bent, his pace was slow,
His course was wavering to and fro—
While the arrowy sleet and the hail, as he passed,
Charged on the steeds of the hurricane-blast.
But the flower was gone where the best must go,
Showing us heaven and leaving us woe—
Gone for ever, that delicate thing,
That had outlived the summer, a child of the spring—
Modest and meek, through the rich autumn's pride
Neglected it blossomed, unheeded it died!
Type of the beautiful wrought in man's fate—
It was slighted too long, it was sought for too late!