God might have bade the earth bring forth
Enough for great and small,
The oak-tree and the cedar-tree,
Without a flower at all.
We might have had enough, enough
For every want of ours,
For luxury, medicine and toil,
And yet have had no flowers.
The ore within the mountain mine
Requireth none to grow;
Nor doth it need the lotus-flower
To make the river flow.
The clouds might give abundant rain;
The nightly dews might fall,
And the herb that keepeth life in man
Might yet have drunk them all.
Then wherefore, wherefore were they made,
All dyed with rainbow-light,
All fashioned with supremest grace
Upspringing day and night:—
Springing in valleys green and low,
And on the mountains high,
And in the silent wilderness
Where no man passes by?
Our outward life requires them not—
Then wherefore had they birth?—
To minister delight to man,
To beautify the earth;
To comfort man—to whisper hope,
Whene’er his faith is dim,
For who so careth for the flowers
Will much more care for him!