290

THE USE OF FLOWERS.

THE USE OF FLOWERS.

God might have bade 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 doth 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 were 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.

THE PALM-TREE.

MARY HOWITT.

Is it the palm, the cocoa-palm,

On the Indian sea by the isles of balm?
Or is it a ship in the breezeless calm?

A ship whose keel is of palm beneath,
Whose ribs of palm have a palm-bark sheath,
And a rudder of palm it steereth with.

292

THE PALM-TREE.

Branches of palm are its spars and rails.
Fibres of palm are its woven sails,

And the rope is of palm that idly trails.

What does the good ship bear so well?
The cocoa-nut with its stony shell,
And the milky sap of its inner cell.

What are its jars, so smooth and fine,
But hollowed nuts, filled with oil and wine,
And the cabbage that ripens under the Line?

The master he sits on a palm-mat soft,
From a beaker of palm his drink is quaffed,
And a palm-thatch shields from the sun aloft.

His dress is woven of palmy strands,

And he holds a palm-leaf scroll in his hands,
Traced with the Prophet's wise commands.

The turban folded about his head

Was daintily wrought of the palm-leaf braid,
And the fan that cools him of palm was made.

Of threads of palm was the carpet spun
Whereon he kneels when the day is done,
And the foreheads of Islam are bowed as one!

To him the palm is a gift divine,
Wherein all uses of man combine,
House, and raiment, and food, and wine.

And, in the hour of his great release,
His need of the palm shall only cease
With the shroud wherein he lieth in peace.

"Allah il Allah!" he sings his psalm, On the Indian sea, by the isles of balm; "Thanks to Allah who gives the palm!"

WHITTIER.

294

THE EMPEROR'S BIRD'S-NEST.

THE EMPEROR'S BIRD'S-NEST.

NCE the Emperor Charles of Spain
With his swarthy, grave commanders,
I forget in what campaign,

Long besieged in mud and rain

Some old frontier town in Flanders.

Up and down the dreary camp,
In great boots of Spanish leather,

Striding with a measured tramp,

These Hidalgos, dull and damp,

Cursed the Frenchmen, cursed the weather.

Thus as to and fro they went,

Over upland and through hollow,

Giving their impatience vent,
Perched upon the Emperor's tent,
In her nest, they spied a swallow.

Yes, it was a swallow's nest,

Built of clay and hair of horses,
Mane or tail, or dragoon's crest,
Found on hedge-rows east and west,
After skirmish of the forces.