Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, FLOWERS, by EDWARD BLISS REED


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

FLOWERS, by                    
First Line: Her garden was her pleasure and her care
Last Line: And by her flowers, in agony she wept.
Subject(s): Flowers; Gardens & Gardening; Love; Nature


Her garden was her pleasure and her care;
Morning and evening one could find her there
Working and wondering. Every scent and hue
Filled her with joy, with beauty pierced her through,
For as her flowers opened to the sun
Each seemed a radiant world her soul had won.
This paradise of perfume her own hand
Had made, this glowing tapestry she planned.
From walls that kept marauding winds shut out
A fountain splashed. A brook wound slow about
Fields of spiced candytuft, hedged with trim box,
Dark blue verbenas, larkspurs, snow-white phlox,
And beds of heliotrope that in the night
Offered rare incense for the stars' delight.
Robin and catbird sought her iris pool,
Fluttered and bathed them in its shallows cool,
Then poised one happy moment on its banks
To offer to the stream their lyric thanks.
Here peace grew as a flower, yet deep at heart
She felt a longing; she was not a part
Of all this flower world. She dwelt exiled
From hope, from love, from life. She craved—a child.

One day she left her garden. In the heat
And dizzy turmoil of a city street,
Startled she heard a child's heart-broken cry,
And stood transfixed; the surging crowd swept by.
Within the gutter stood—a sight of shame—
Two wretched creatures. One could scarcely name
Them man and woman; sin and black disgrace
Told a grim story in each brutal face.
The woman pushed a box that served as cart,
With broken wheels that sprawled and fell apart.
In it, a child. No dirt, no rags could hide
Its radiant beauty; Nature glorified
Upon that head her diadem had set—
The man clutched at a half-smoked cigarette,
Whereat the child leaped, laughing, in its place.
The woman cursed and smote it in the face,
Then, as it sobbed, jeered at its pain and fright.
The crowd swept on and bore them from her sight.

At evening slow she walked her garden round
Seeking for peace—no peace, no rest she found.
The child had passed forever from her life
And yet its cry still pierced her as a knife.
That was the plant, if God had heard her prayer,
She would have watched unfolding in soft air;
Or else her tree; she would have loved it when
It offered boughs for birds and fruit for men.
Or else a pine, set on a ledge to be
A welcome guide for fishing fleets at sea;
An oak, the traveler's shade—God only knew
With that life given her, what she might do.
A finch flashed by her, one she loved of old;
She heard no song, she saw no breast of gold.
She tried to bind the roses to the wall;
Her hands dropped down—the mockery of it all!
Within the shadow of a tree she crept,
And by her flowers, in agony she wept.





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