I SAW two flowers at morning:
The one was a full-blown rose;
And it lay at rest on a matron’s breast,
Like a gleam from the sunset close.
The other an opening rose-bud,
As white as the sea-washed pearl;
And it graced, amid masses of dark-brown hair,
The head of a beautiful girl.
And the flowers were types of these lovely ones,
That mother and daughter fair,
Sending abroad, o’er life’s arid road,
Sweet perfume everywhere.

I saw two graves at even.
Mid the fading light of day;
And there, at the head of the cherished dead,
The morning flowerets lay.
And I cried, “O gentle flowers,
Are those beautiful ones beneath?
Can aught so bright and so lovely
Feel the withering grasp of Death?”
“Not so, not so,” said the flowers;
“ ‘Tis but dust beneath this sod;
For the holy souls on the sunset ray
Went up to the bosom of God!”

-H. COPPEE.