The Use Of Flowers

  God might have bade the earth bring forth     Enough for great and small,   The oak tree and the cedar tree,     Without a flower at all.   We might have had enough, enough     For every want of ours,   For luxury, medicine, and toil,     And yet have had no flowers.   The ore within the mountain mine     Requireth none to grow;   Nor doth it need the lotus flower     To make the river flow.   The clouds might give abundant rain,     The nightly dews might fall,   And the herb that keepeth life in man     Might yet have drunk them all.   Then wherefore, wherefore were they made,     All dyed with rainbow light,   All fashioned with supremest grace,     Upspringing day and night,    Springing in valleys green and low,     And on the mountain high,   And in the silent wilderness,     Where no man passes by?   Our outward life requires them not,     Then wherefore had they birth?    To minister delight to man,     To beautify the earth;    To comfort man, to whisper hope     Whene'er his faith is dim;   For Whoso careth for the flowers     Will much more care for him. MARY HOWITT