English Poetry I: From Chaucer to Gray.
The Harvard Classics. 1909–14. |
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| 222. The Flower |
| | | George Herbert (1593–1633) |
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| HOW fresh, O Lord, how sweet and clean | |
| Are thy returns! Ev’n as the flowers in Spring, | |
| To which, besides their own demean, | |
| The late-past frosts tributes of pleasure bring; | |
| Grief melts away | 5 |
| Like snow in May, | |
| As if there were no such cold thing. | |
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| Who would have thought my shrivell’d heart | |
| Could have recover’d greenness? It was gone | |
| Quite under ground; as flowers depart | 10 |
| To see their mother-root, when they have blown, | |
| Where they together | |
| All the hard weather, | |
| Dead to the world, keep house unknown. | |
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| These are Thy wonders, Lord of power, | 15 |
| Killing and quick’ning, bringing down to Hell | |
| And up to Heaven in an hour; | |
| Making a chiming of a passing bell. | |
| We say amiss | |
| This or that is; | 20 |
| Thy word is all, if we could spell. | |
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| O that I once past changing were, | |
| Fast in thy Paradise where no flower can wither! | |
| Many a Spring I shoot up fair, | |
| Off’ring at Heaven, growing and groaning thither; | 25 |
| Nor doth my flower | |
| Want a Spring shower, | |
| My sins and I joining together. | |
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