Explore "Transformation (Songs of Hearth and Altar)" by Henry Van Dyke on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Only a little shrivelled seed, / It might be flower, or grass, or weed; / Only a box of earth on the edge / Of a narrow, dusty window-ledge; / Only a few scant summer showers; / Only a few clear shining hours; / That was all. Yet God could make / Out of these, for a sick child's sake, / A blossom-wonder, fair and sweet / As ever broke at an angel's feet.
Only a life of barren pain, / Wet with sorrowful tears for rain, / Warmed sometimes by a wandering gleam / Of joy, that seemed but a happy dream; / A life as common and brown and bare / As the box of earth in the window there; / Yet it bore, at last, the precious bloom / Of a perfect soul in that narrow room; / Pure as the snowy leaves that fold / Over the flower's heart of gold.