Welcome back to Flower Poetry Fridays with Mrs. Sigourney. Each Friday a new poem will be posted from her The Voice Of Flowers.
THE DESERT FLOWER. Desert White Cactus
A WEARY course the traveller held,
As on with footstep lone,
By scientific zeal impelled,
He tracked the torrid zone.
Sad thought was with his native glades,
His father’s pleasant halls,
Where darkly peer, through woven shades,
The abbey’s ivied walls.
Yet to the far horizon’s bound,
Far as the glance could sweep,
The sandy desert spread around,
Like one vast, waveless deep.
What saw he ‘mid that dreary scene,
To wake his rapture wild ?
A flower ! A flower ! with glorious mien,
Like some bright rainbow’s child.
Kneeling, he clasped it to his breast,
He praised its wondrous birth,
Fair, fragile, beautiful, and blest,
The poetry of earth.
No secret fountain through its veins
Sustaining vigor threw,
No dew refreshed those arid plains,
Yet there the stranger grew.
It seemed as if some tender friend,
Beloved in childhood’s day,
A murmur through those leaves did send,
A smile to cheer his way ;
And fervently a prayer for those,
In his own distant bower,
Like incense from his heart uprose,
Beside that Desert Flower.
For thus do Nature’s hallowed charms
Man’s softened soul inspire,
As to the infant in her arms,
The mother points its sire.
In the middle of the desert it probably feels like the sand can go on and on and that tan is about the only color around.
A flower amongst the waves of sand must look glorious — even if it were pure white.
Isn’t it curious that a flower could bloom in such an arid place? Even without dew to refresh its beauty? However it happened to be there, the flower brought a smile and some cheer to the weary traveler.
Flowers cheer me all the time! You don’t have to get lost in the desert to appreciate the beauty of flowers. Just look around you and you’ll see them.
Come back next Friday for the next installment in our series of flower poems from Mrs. Sigourney’s The Voice of Flowers, “Minerva’s Prize”.
