The Flower

The Flower

 by George Herbert

How fresh, O Lord, how sweet and clean

Are Thy returns! ev’n as the flow’rs in Spring,

     To which, besides their own demean

The late-past frosts tributes of pleasure bring;

                    Grief melts away

                     Like snow in May,

     As if there were no such cold thing.

     Who would have thought my shrivel’d heart

Could have recover’d greennesse? It was gone

     Quite under ground; as flow’rs depart

To see their mother-root, when they have blown,

                 Where they together

                 All the hard weather,

     Dead to the world, keep house unknown.

     These are Thy wonders, Lord of power,

Killing and quickning, bringing down to Hell

     And up to Heaven in an houre;

Making a chiming of a passing-bell.

                 We say amisse

                 This or that is;

     Thy word is all, if we could spell.

     O that I once past changing were,

Fast in Thy Paradise, where no flower can wither;

     Many a Spring I shoot up fair,

Offring at Heav’n, growing and groning thither,

                 Nor doth my flower

                 Want a Spring-showre,

     My sinnes and I joyning together.

     But while I grow in a straight line,

Still upwards bent, as if Heav’n were mine own,

     Thy anger comes, and I decline:

What frost to that? what pole is not the zone

                 Where all things burn,

                 When Thou dost turn,

     And the least frown of Thine is shown?

     And now in age I bud again,

After so many deaths I live and write;

     I once more smell the dew and rain,

And relish versing: O, my onely Light,

                 It cannot be

                 That I am he

     On whom Thy tempests fell all night.

     These are Thy wonders, Lord of love,

To make us see we are but flow’rs that glide;

     Which when we once can find and prove,

Thou hast a garden for us where to bide.

                 Who would be more,

                Swelling through store,

     Forfeit their Paradise by their pride.