A dark dull patch of earth was all
The ground I called my own;
No dank weeds marred it growing tall,
Or tares by hatred sown;
But o'er it strayed no perfumed breeze,
Or wild song from the sheltering trees.

​And from my eyes fell many a tear
That mourned my barren lot,
No plant to tend, no vine to rear,
And train around my cot.
Light, liberty, and life were mine,
But beauty sought a statelier shrine.

​Ah me! one early morn I crept
Out where the sunbeams fell;
I wondered that I ever slept,
When morn broke o'er the dell,
Flinging red roses o'er the sky,
And dropping them on such as I.

​When, lo, a tiny shoot appeared
Above the spangled soil,
And day by day it grew and reared
A crowned head, with a coil
Of living green, the sun unbound,
To spread its pomp above my ground.

​It was more gorgeous than the King
Whom Sheba went to see,
It drew its beauteous colouring
From beams that played round me,
And censed the garments of the air
With perfumes as Arabia's rare.

I clapped my hands, I wept for joy,
I blessed my darling flower;
It heralded the lily coy,
The rose that glads my bower,
Yet in my heart 'twas held most dear,
Because it cheered a desert drear.

O maiden fair! in saddened home,
Where age is grave and weak;
Sigh not on sunlit track to roam,
Because the soil is bleak;
Let thy bright life to all round thee
Be what that flower was to me.

"Go to a poor man's garden and ask him my name—he'll tell you it is Heartsease; and where will you find a better than that? And why am I called so? Because it's my character—wherever I go, there I flourish. If the gardener seeds me, pots me, and pets me, I come out all velvet and gold, like yonder beauties. If the wind carries my seed to a wall-top or a rubbish heap, I do my best and come out in the same colours, though not so rich and bright. I rejoice alike in sunshine and shower; neither drought nor rains will destroy me. I may hang my head now and then, but I always come up again. No lot is perfect; but that is the nearest to it which has heartsease to sweeten it." ​
                                                                                                                                  ~from Original Fables (1870)
                                                                                                                                        Sophie Amelia Prosser

Why art thou thus in thy beauty cast,
O lonely, loneliest flower;
Where the sound of song hath never pass'd
From human hearth or bower?

I pity thee, for thy heart of love,
For that glowing heart, that fain
Would breathe out joy with each wind to rove--
In vain, lost thing! in vain! 

I pity thee, for thy wasted bloom,
For thy glory's, fleeting hour,
For the desert place, thy living tomb--
O lonely, loneliest flower! 

I said—but a low voice made reply,
"Lament not for the flower !
Though its blossoms all unmark'd must die,
They have had a glorious dower.

" Though it blooms afar from the minstrel's way,
And the paths where lovers tread;
Yet strength and hope, like an inborn day,
By its odours have been shed.

" Yes! dews more sweet than ever fell
O'er island of the blest,
Were shaken forth, from its purple bell,
On a suffering human breast.

" A wanderer came, as a stricken deer,
O'er the waste of burning sand,
He bore the wound of an Arab spear,
He fled from a ruthless band.

" And dreams of home in a troubled tide
Swept o'er his darkening eye,
And he lay down by the fountain side,
In his mute despair to die.

" But his glance was caught by the desert's flower,
The precious boon of Heaven;
And sudden hope, like a vernal shower,
To his fainting heart was given.

' For the bright flower spoke of one above;
Of the presence felt to brood
With a spirit of pervading love,
O'er the wildest solitude.

" Oh! the seed was thrown those wastes among
In a bless'd and gracious hour,
For the lorn one rose in heart made strong,
By the lonely, loneliest flower !"
                                              ​~Mrs. Hemans

"I asked the flowers in the soft spring-time,
​Wherefore they smiled in their youthful prime

When the stormy days so soon should come
That would blight for ever their beauty and bloom?

And the sweet flowers answered, 'Each day renews
​On our leaves the sunshine that dries the dews;

'Why should we not smile? Till now we have thriven,
And the sunshine and dew are both from Heaven!'"
                                                 ~M. A. Browne

“One must maintain a little bit of summer, even in the middle of winter.”
                                                         ​                                       ~Henry David Thoreau

"I'm the little 'Heart's-Ease'!
​I don't care for pouting skies!"

​ God might have made the earth bring forth
Enough for great and small,
The oak tree and the cedar tree,
Without a flower at all.

We might have had enough, enough
For every want of ours
For luxury, medicine and toil
And yet have had no flowers.

​The ore within the mountain mine
Requireth none to grow;
Nor does it need the lotus-flower
To make the river flow.

The clouds might give abundant rain,
The nightly dews might fall,
And the herb that keepeth life in man
Might yet have drunk them all.

Then, wherefore, wherefore are they made,
All dyed with rainbow light,
All fashioned with supremest grace
Upspringing day and night;

Springing in valleys green and low,
And on the mountain high,
And in the silent wilderness,
Where no man passes by?

Our outward life requires them not,
Then wherefore had they birth?
To minister delight to man,
To beautify the earth,

​To comfort man, to whisper hope
Whene'er his faith is dim;
For whoso careth for the flowers
Will much more care for him.
                                      ~Mary Howitt