Poems of Home and Country/Flowers in Winter
FLOWERS IN WINTER.
FAIR flowers that bloom so richly,
As if the summer's breath
Were wafted o'er their birthplace,
And not the chill of death!
I hail the joyful emblem,—
Fit cheer for hours of gloom,—
Earth has its wintry trials,
But 'tis not all a tomb.
I listen in the evening
To the sighing of the gale;
I watch the heaping snowdrifts,
And hear the rattling hail;
And I think, with grateful spirit,
What a glorious God is ours,
Who is mighty in the tempest,
And gentle in the flowers.
The piercing blasts are blowing;
But every smiling cup
Breathes forth such charming fragrance,
And looks so sweetly up,
I forget the shortened daylight,
And the wintry chill and gloom,
And heaven seems hovering near me,
With its everlasting bloom.
And I see amid the darkness
Of the path that mortals tread,
In the land of grief and partings,
Of the mourning and the dead,
How God, with loving mercy,
Softening the painful blow,
Leaves joy, to gild our sorrow,
Like flowers in time of snow.
The cherished forms that faltered,
And we laid them down to rest,
In their still retreats are sleeping,
With the peace of Jesus blest;
Like the blossom from the tuber,
Like the harvest from the grain,
They will spring,—the time approaches,—
To their lovely life again.
They are living still in beauty,
Where the soft airs ever last,
Where they never feel the fury
Of the winter's bitter blast;
Nor frosts, with chilling fingers,
Nor griefs, with scalding tear,
Where summer ever lingers,
And flowers bloom all the year.