The Trailing Arbutus
I wandered lonely where the pine trees made
Against the bitter East their barricade,
And, guided by its sweet perfume,
I found, within a narrow dell,
The trailing spring flower tinted like a shell
Amid dry leaves and mosses at my feet.
From under dead boughs, for whose loss the pines
Moaned ceaseless overhead, the blossoming vines
lifted their glad surprise,
While yet the bluebird smoothed in leafless trees
His feathers ruffled by the chill sea-breeze,
And snow-drifts lingered under April skies.
As, pausing, o'er the lonely flower I bent,
I thought of lives thus lowly, clogged and pent
Which yet care and cumber, coldness and decay,
To lend a sweetness to the ungenial day
And make the sad earth happier for their bloom.
John Greenleaf Whitter
4 comments:
Beautiful
Lovely plant - never heard of it before!
Is that the Whittier who wrote some of those mournful hymns??
Never heard of this before either...but I love it...happy Friday to you :)
Ernestine
Gilly
Anastasia
The Trailing Arbutus is a dainty shy flower that grows close to the ground. I think they are native to the eastern U.S. The flowers are often under its own leaves or the fallen leaves on the Forest floor. The smell is divine and gives the woods a delicate fragrance. Putting your nose to the ground so to speak is worth the bending over when you find the plant. Our woods is full of them and the bluff by the creek allows us to get a good whiff standing at the base and leaning into the clumps where they grow along the rock face.
Gilly, I don't know if Whittier was a hymn writer. I will have to google that. He certainly wrote lovely poems which I'm sure have been put to music somewhere.
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