Poems (Katharine Elizabeth Howard)/The flower that cometh up
THE FLOWER THAT COMETH UP
To him, the self righteous one, to him who with sublime pity looks down from a great height,To him I speak. Come down into the valleys and get experience.Do not annihilate us utterly, O Man with no experience.Come down a little, that you may hear more plainly.Come down a little, that you may see more clearly,—You who see nothing beautiful in dirt.Come down and look a little, you have not done your share of digging, you have not thought about the flower that cometh up.You who walk among the virtues. Ah!You know not true.You believe in charity, but of the things for which you have it you know nothing.You have not been incarnate with them, not thoroughly, not yet. It is that you must be reground upon the stones which grind the small.In a few aeons you will climb again out of the dirt,And with some reminiscences—maybe.