The Earliest Flower

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.