Some tender buds were left upon my stem
In mimicry of life,
But ah! the children will not know,
Till time has withered them,
The woe
With which they're rife.
But now I see I was not plucked for naught,
And after in life's vase
Of glass set while I might survive,
But by a kind hand brought
Alive
To a strange place.
That stock thus thinned will soon redeem its hours,
And by another year,
Such as God knows, with freer air,
More fruits and fairer flowers
Will bear,
While I droop here.
This world has many rings, like Saturn, and we live now on the
outmost of them all. None can say deliberately that he inhabits
the same sphere, or is contemporary with, the flower which his
hands have plucked, and though his feet may seem to crush it,
inconceivable spaces and ages separate them, and perchance there
is no danger that he will hurt it.
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