The Primrose of the Rock

A Rock there is whose homely front
   The passing Traveller slights;
Yet there the Glow-worms hang their lamps,
   Like stars, at various heights;
And one coy Primrose to that Rock
   The vernal breeze invites.

What hideous warfare hath been waged,
   What kingdoms overthrown,
Since first I spied that Primrose-tuft
   And marked it for my own;
A lasting link in Nature’s chain
   From highest Heaven let down!

The Flowers, still faithful to the stems,
   Their fellowship renew;
The stems are faithful to the root,
   That worketh out of view;
And to the rock the root adheres
   In every fibre true.

Close clings to earth the living rock,
   Though threatening still to fall;
The earth is constant to her sphere;
   And God upholds them all:
So blooms this lonely Plant, nor dreads
   Her annual funeral.

* * * * *

Here closed the meditative Strain;
   But air breathed soft that day,
The hoary mountain-heights were cheered,
   The sunny vale looked gay;
And to the Primrose of the Rock
   I gave this after-lay.

I sang, Let myraids of bright flowers,
   Like Thee, in field and grove
Revive unenvied,—mightier far
   Than tremblings that reprove
Our vernal tendencies to hope
   Is God’s redeeming love:

That love which changed, for wan disease,
   For sorrow that had bent
O’er hopeless dust, for withered age,
   Their moral element,
And turned the thistles of a curse
   To types beneficent.

Sin-blighted though we are, we too,
   The reasoning Sons of Men,
From one oblivious winter called
   Shall rise, and breathe again;
And in eternal summer lose
   Our threescore years and ten.

To humbleness of heart descends
   This prescience from on high,
The faith that elevates the Just,
   Before and when they die;
And makes each soul a separate heaven,
   A court for Deity.