Emblematic Flower of Michigan W. C. T. U.
In Flora’s dominion no flower’s so fitting
To symbol our union of labor and love;
Not tender and petted, a hot-house exotic,
It lives when the tempest is raging above.
Sweet forest-born flower! ’Twas Michigan’s dower
When Nature apportioned her gifts that are rare—
So lovely, yet lowly! Affection, that’s holy,
Seems blent with its fragrance and breathing a prayer
That the loved may be borne in the arms of His care.
Its coming we hail as a promise of blessing—
That chains shall be riven, a glory be born;
Its delicate hue is a hint of our mission—
The soft, rosy blush that first tinges the morn,
When hope is awakening and gloom is receding—
A pressage of light that shall gladden the world,
When darkness has fled and the cloud-rack is lifted
And day’s golden banners on the hills are unfurled.
It needs not the florist, with art and punctilio
Nor asks for the smiles of the sun-lighted skies,
But richest and brightest, ’tis found in seclusion,
In depths of the woodland where dark shadow lies;
Far up on the highlands, or creeping on lowlands,
’Mong towering oaks or ’neath whispering pines,
The shell-tinted bloom of our sweet, trailing laurel
The lowliest objects with beauty entwines.
’Tis Purity’s emblem—Priscilla’s loved flower!
Oft springing in fenlands where dark, sodden mould
Grows vile-odored herbage, e’en poison-fed night-shade,
Yet, pure there, its waxen, sweet blossoms unfold.
Thus white-ribbon bands, thro’ the moral morasses,
Tho’ threading the paths which the vilest are in,
With purity throned in the soul of all action,
May labor ’mid evils, unsullied by sin.
Ah! truly, no flower in Flora’s dominion,
Can symbol the virtues and graces like this—
’Tis faith and endurance in winter’s wild tempest,
While gentleness tenderly speaks in the kiss
That comes in its fragrance, on fairy winged zephyr
And hope, in the buds swelling under the snow,
Is whispering of joys when the full opened blossoms
Shall herald the summer, with roseate glow.
We’ll gather it in, from our own native woodlands,
And wreathe, with its beauty, our altar of prayer;
The holiest thought, with its ambient odor,
Is stirred, as with incense, afloat on the air.
We love it!—we love it! our sweet trailing laurel,
And make it our emblem in labor for God—
For home, with its blessings and love-lighted altar,
And land of our birth, with its trial-tracked sod.