Welcome back to Flower Poetry Fridays with Mrs. Sigourney. Each Friday a new poem will be posted from her The Voice Of Flowers.
THE DISOBEDIENT PANSY.
Pansy in a Pot
A PANSY had many little ones. She talked much with them daily—instructing them, and set them a good example of sweet temper and humility.
She said often to them, "As soon as the great sun sinks away from you, and you feel the cool, fresh dews, compose yourself to rest. Look up smilingly, and breathe one sweet breath to Him who giveth the sun-beam, and the drops of dew.
When you have offered this, (the prayer of all good flowers,) fold your leaves, and bend your heads in sleep, for He will take care of you. The buds that thus early and piously go to rest, will flourish and be
pleasing in His sight."
So her children obeyed her, all except one.
This young pansy grew on rather a longer
stalk than the others ; and it said, "I wonder
why my mother is thus always lecturing us ?"
"I think I know as much as she. I do not
like to go so early to bed. I have heard that
those who have genius are always brightest
when it is late. I wish to see how the world
looks at midnight."
So she omitted her prayers, and strained her
eyes open as wide as she could. Her brothers
and sisters were quietly sleeping around her,
and she laughed at what she called their stupidity.
By and by she began to grow tired, when
suddenly a huge black spider seized her in his
claws. She cried out in terror, but no one
was awake to hear her.
He held her so tight that she could scarcely
breathe, and tears stood in her large, dark eyes.
In the gray dawn he spun a web over her face,
and fastened it to a neighboring shrub.
Her mother awoke early, and lamented over
her ; "Oh, my poor daughter, would that I
could help you ! Perhaps He, to whom you
forgot to pray, who is so good to all, may yet
cause these chains to fall from you."
Bitterly did the young pansy deplore her
disobedience. Her fright, and the spider’s
cords, with their tight lacing, had so com-
pressed her heart and lungs, that she turned
pale, and panted for breath.
When the noon-day sun beat fiercely upon
her, she drooped and faded away—saying, with
her last, faint sigh, "Oh ! brothers and sisters,
take warning by my sad fate. Never disobey
our dear mother, for she is wiser than we."
The moral of the story was that it’s better to say your evening prayers than risk losing the protection of the One from above, else something bad could happen to you while you lay sleeping.
All along we’ve known that “Mother knows best”, but some of us just have to try things out for ourselves and learn the hard way that we should have listened better.
The young pansy did not see the folly of staying out late with no one near for help or protection. She learned too late why mother lectured her little ones on taking the righteous path.
Come back next Friday for the next installment in our series of flower poems from Mrs. Sigourney’s The Voice of Flowers, “The Lobelia Cardinalis”.
