Wild Flowers by George MacDonald — Read

Content Primroses, / With hearts at rest in your thick leaves' soft care, / Peeping as from his mother's lap the child / Who courts shy shelter from his own open air! -- / Hanging Harebell, / Whose blue heaven to no wanderer ever closes, / Though thou still lookest earthward from thy domed cell! -- / Fluttering-wild / Anemone, so well / Named of the Wind, to whom thou, fettered-free, / Yieldest thee, helpless -- wilfully, / With _Take me or leave me, / Sweet Wind, I am thine own Anemone_! -- / Thirsty Arum, ever dreaming / Of lakes in wildernesses gleaming! -- / Fire-winged Pimpernel, / Communing with some hidden well, / And secrets with the sun-god holding, / At fixed hour folding and unfolding! -- / How is it with you, children all, / When human children on you fall, / Gather you in eager haste, / Spoil your plenty with their waste.

Fill and fill their dropping hands? / Feel you hurtfully disgraced / By their injurious demands? / Do you know them from afar, / Shuddering at their merry hum, / Growing faint as near they come? / Blind and deaf they think you are -- / Is it only ye are dumb? / You alive at least, I think, / Trembling almost on the brink / Of our lonely consciousness: / If it be so, / Take this comfort for your woe, / For the breaking of your rest, / For the tearing in your breast, / For the blotting of the sun, / For the death too soon begun, / For all else beyond redress -- / Or what seemeth so to be -- / That the children's wonder-springs / Bubble high at sight of you, / Lovely, lowly, common things: / In you more than you they see! .