Flower Faces

There be fair violet lives that bloom unseen
In dewy shade, unvexed by any care;
And they who live them wear the flower-like face
Of simple pureness, which amid the crowd
Of haggard brows strikes like a sweet perfume
Upon the jaded sense. God covers them,
Maybe, beneath the shadow of His wing,
That they may sweeten all His dark for Him,
And from their secret place waft airs of calm
Upon His troubled worlds. Sometimes they are
The holy sisters, who with wakeful eyes
Watch by the sick in dreary hospitals
Close to the battlefield. Sometimes I see
The face gleam out beneath a Quaker hood,
More lily-like than violet, silver haired
With exquisite eyes of silent blessedness;
And sometimes they be wives whose wedded love
Is fortunate, who always hear the mirth
Of children's voices like a babbling brook
Follow them through the dusty ways of life.
And sometimes 'tis a fair young rustic face,
Peach-shaded with the purity of health;
And she, the Mother of the Christ, looked thus,
But sadder, with the holy stain of tears
Upon her bloom, like rain on bursting bad.
But whensoe'er I see the liquid eyes
And smiling innocence, I think of flowers
That grow upon a mossy bank in spring,
When larks are singing in the windy skies,
And all my spirit rises up in praise
Because God's world holds in its wrecked design,
His image still, who made it very good.