Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry.
Volume V. Nature. 1904. | | | | V. Trees: Flowers: Plants | | The Use of Flowers | | Mary Howitt (1799–1888) |
| | | 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 | 5 |
| For every want of ours, | |
| For luxury, medicine, and toil, | |
| And yet have had no flowers. | |
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| Then wherefore, wherefore were they made, | |
| All dyed with rainbow light, | 10 |
| All fashioned with supremest grace, | |
| Upspringing day and night:— | |
| Springing in valleys green and low, | |
| And on the mountains high, | |
| And in the silent wilderness | 15 |
| Where no man passes by? | |
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| Our outward life requires them not,— | |
| Then wherefore had they birth?— | |
| To minister delight to man, | |
| To beautify the earth; | 20 |
| To comfort man,—to whisper hope, | |
| Whene’er his faith is dim, | |
| For who so careth for the flowers | |
| Will care much more for him! | | | | |
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