  By J. S. HOWSON. Fair daffodils I took across the western sea away, To cheer my lonely cabin and to talk to me of home. Not double daffodils I took, but single—freshly come From wintry village fields. I hate the dowager display, That spoils sweet nature’s manner, and with bold and stately stare Arrays in artificial pomp the fashionable square. Not for me only were those gifts. I marked where children clung, Warm and close-pressed, around a mother seeking distant lands. One flower I chose apart and placed in tiny baby hands, When soon it lay in fragments, on the wet deck torn and flung. Dear child! she only broke her latest toy. What should she know Of hopes and memories that in those yellow petals grow? Another to a woman lone, with sorrow worn and spent, I gave: she took it tearfully; and when I next passed by, She held it tenderly, and watched it with a serious eye, As loth that it should fade. Perchance her quickened fancy went, Where once her footsteps strayed, by mountain stream and copse and glen, And neighbor-cottages, which now she will not see again. Fair daffodils, what power lives for us in your gentle mood! Sure promise of bright spring beyond the changeful stormy ways; Lessons of quiet love, that bind our last and earliest days; Of patience, and of humble hope to be not great but good. Then let me learn what ye would calmly teach, here by my side, In pensive dignity and grace and modest queenly pride. decorative line There is no uprightness of intention that can justify calumny; nor even though the question were the conversion of the whole earth to the belief of revealed truth, would it be allowable to blacken the innocent, because we must not do the least evil even to bring about the greatest good, for “the truth of God requires not the assistance of our untruths,” as the Scripture says (Job xiii:7).—Pascal. decorative line |
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