Sonnets - Hidden Worth

The rose-tree blushes by our garden wall,
    A queenly matron with her baby-buds
    Dancing about her in that air she floods
With sweetness of a lover’s madrigal
Translated into odor! Crowned by all
    The fervors of her poets, and fair maids
    And the pale sufferer pining under shades
Where only flowers for summer sunbeams fall, —
She carries broadly in her ample charms
    The charter of her being, which creates
Delight from living; – and yet so disarms
    By love the very sense it captivates,
That she who came as odor, form, and hue,
Bears for the soul a bloom diviner than we knew!
II.
O could we guess what secret hides so well
    In the new violets when their vernal faith
Chides the faint air till slow-relenting death
Sets free the green year from his icy cell:
Or could we catch from every purple bell
    What music trembles in the “baby-breath,”*
    And the faint word the lowliest lily saith
Behind her broad palm, all her heart to tell; –
    We, too, might have their sweet, unwavering trust,
And their still courage, loyal to the call
Of the Great Soul who bids them from the dust
    To adorn the chambers of his regal hall!
Yet something pure and tender, strong and free,
Stirred by their subtle hints, we owe their ministry.
III.
More than a flower, — or less than brier and weed, —
    Must every blossom to its lover yield; 
    Like those untoiling “lillies of the field,”
With royal vesture for the quick eye’s need,
Yet bearing to the heart a nobler seed
    Of truth immortal, — leaves whereby are healed
    The soul’s distemper; and such perfumes reeled
From their warm core, as prove them pure indeed!
Veiled in the best a better sleeps unseen,
    Till Faith evokes it, — as her symbol Dove
Broods in a lily’s heart, his wings between
    The waxen petals hovering white as love;+
Then every flower to him who heeds it most,
Comes with an effluence of the Holy Ghost.
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*Grape Hyacinth.
+The “Holy Ghost Lily,” so-called, — a pure white lily, deep in the heart of which the central organs have a striking resemblance to a dove, hovering over its nest, with half-lifted wings.