C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.

Lucy Larcom

All flowers of Spring are not May’s own;

The crocus cannot often kiss her;

The snow-drop, ere she comes, has flown—

The earliest violets always miss her.

Because its myriad glimmering plumes

Like a great army’s stir and wave;

Because its golden billows blooms,

The poor man’s barren walks to lave:

Because its sun-shaped blossoms show

How souls receive the light of God,

And unto earth give back that glow—

I thank Him for the Goldenrod.

Grief is a tattered tent

Where through God’s light doth shine.

June falls asleep upon her bier of flowers;

In vain are dewdrops sprinkled o’er her,

In vain would fond winds fan her back to life,

Her hours are numbered on the floral dial.

The children with the streamlets sing,

When April stops at last her weeping;

And every happy growing thing

Laughs like a babe just roused from sleeping.

The land is dearer for the sea,

The ocean for the shore.

Thou hastenest down, between the hills to meet me at the road,

The secret scarcely lisping of thy beautiful abode

Among the pines and mosses of yonder shadowy height,

Where thou dost sparkle into song, and fill the woods with light.

When April steps aside for May,

Like diamonds all the rain-drops glisten;

Fresh violets open every day:

To some new bird each hour we listen.

The peach-bud glows, the wild bee hums, and wind-flowers wave in graceful gladness.

To her bier comes the year, not with weeping and distress, as mortals do; but to guide her way to it, all the trees have torches lit.