Explore "Thorn and Rose (Epigrams, Greetings, and Inscriptions)" by Henry Van Dyke on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Far richer than a thornless rose / Whose branch with beauty never glows, / Is that which every June adorns / With perfect bloom among its thorns.
Merely to live without a pain / Is little gladness, little gain, / Ah, welcome joy tho' mixt with grief, -- / The thorn-set flower that crowns the leaf.
June 20, 1914.