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The Flower of the Desert

2/5/2019

10 Comments

 
I don't have the right pictures to illustrate this poem, but it has really touched my heart and I just had to share it. Nothing that is truly beautiful is useless or will ever be lost! 
Picture
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
10 Comments
JanetLee
2/5/2019 09:29:55 pm

Beautiful, just beautiful.

Thank you for sharing.

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Joanna link
2/6/2019 08:43:50 pm

I'm glad you liked it! 😊

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Veleria
2/5/2019 11:13:18 pm

What a touching and beautiful poem.

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Joanna link
2/6/2019 08:45:02 pm

It is very beautiful isn't it? I've read it over and over the last few days. 😊

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Veleria
2/6/2019 11:15:46 pm

I'm getting them now. They are coming from noreply@editmysite.com. I think I was dumping them in spam because it did not say it was from your site and I wouldn't open them. I got brave and your name Joanna was there. I do have to put the check in the box to notify me for new comments before I start to type in this box or it won't work. Whew! I finally figured it all out. Yeah! Veleria

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Joanna link
2/7/2019 08:08:15 am

Oh good!! That is a suspicious sounding email address, so no wonder you thought it was spam. I thought it would at least say it was from Weebly. I used to automatically get emails whenever there was a new comment and that is what it always said, but that was over a year ago. I finally opted out of getting the emails because I check my control page regularly anyway. Anyway, I'm happy you figured it out! 😊

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Jason link
2/8/2019 05:23:53 pm

Lump in my throat. I have never heard of this poet.

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Joanna link
2/8/2019 06:52:22 pm

I get choked up every time I read it, too. I didn't anything about the poet either...I just found that poem in a book called Flowers: Their Moral, Language, and Poetry, by H. G. Adams. I looked her up. Her name was Felicia Hemans, and she lived from 1793-1835. She is best known for her poem Casabianca, with the first line "The boy stood on the burning deck". I don't think I've read the poem before but strange to say that line sounds very familiar!

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Peter Bolton
12/27/2019 02:40:55 pm

Thank you for your beautiful presentation of this poem. I found it because I am putting Felicia Hemans's poetry onto wikisource and, finding it in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, 1832, I was looking to see if it was subsequently included in Hemans's published volumes. Unusually, it is not, at least not until 1845. It is telling that you had not heard of Mrs Hemans because she was, in her day, one of the most widely read British poets and can easily hold her own with Wordsworth. What followed was the blatantly sexist propaganda of the all male literary establishment for whom the norms of academic analysis counted for nothing when it came to female poets

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Joanna link
1/1/2020 09:03:43 am

That is all very interesting! I just looked at her page on Wikisource and will be back to read through more in the future. Thank you for making all of that available!
I didn't read much poetry until a couple years ago which is probably the main reason I wasn't familiar with her. Since then I've read a lot of literature from the 19th century and it does seem that she was quite well-known.

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    ​I am a passionate gardener and seed-saver, who also enjoys playing the violin and accordion, running, spending time with my 4 golden retrievers, keeping chickens, photography, and reading. ​
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