| Arthur Quiller-Couch, comp. The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse. 1922. | | | | The Pansy and the Prayer-book | | By Matilda Betham-Edwards (1836–1919) |
| | | FOLLOWING across the moors a sound of bells, | |
| We found a church, the smallest that could be, | |
| Hid in a tamarisk-grove beside the sea, | |
| And graves of shipwreck’d men set round with shells. | |
| We enter’d when the prayers were almost done: | 5 |
| The little children nodded on their knees, | |
| The preacher’s voice was drown’d in hum of bees | |
| That danced about the lectern in the sun. | |
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| Awhile we knelt I let a pansy glide | |
| Between her sweet grave face and open book, | 10 |
| And whisper’d as she turn’d with chiding look— | |
| ‘Heaven has not will’d, dear heart, that aught divide | |
| Love pure as ours, nor blames if thought of me | |
| Come like this flower between thy God and thee.’ | | | | |
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