Voice of Flowers/The Desert Flower
THE DESERT FLOWER.
A weary course the traveller held,
As on with footstep lone,
By scientific zeal impelled,
He tracked the torrid zone.
Sad thought was with his native glades,
His father's pleasant halls,
Where darkly peer, through woven shades,
The abbey's ivied walls.
Yet to the far horizon's bound,
Far as the glance could sweep,
The sandy desert spread around,
Like one vast, waveless deep.
What saw he 'mid that dreary scene,
To wake his rapture wild?
A flower! A flower! with glorious mien,
Like some bright rainbow's child.
Kneeling, he clasped it to his breast,
He praised its wondrous birth,
Fair, fragile, beautiful, and blest,
The poetry of earth.
No secret fountain through its veins
Sustaining vigor threw,
No dew refreshed those arid plains,
Yet there the stranger grew.
It seemed as if some tender friend,
Beloved in childhood's day,
A murmur through those leaves did send,
A smile to cheer his way;
And fervently a prayer for those,
In his own distant bower,
Like incense from his heart uprose,
Beside that Desert Flower.
For thus do Nature's hallowed charms
Man's softened soul inspire,
As to the infant in her arms,
The mother points its sire.