Last Words

CONTENTS


MARY'S MEADOW,

LETTERS FROM A LITTLE GARDEN,

SNAP-DRAGONS,

DANDELION CLOCKS,

THE BLIND MAN AND THE TALKING DOG,

SO-SO,

THE TRINITY FLOWER,

THE KYRKEGRIM TURNED PREACHER,

LADDERS TO HEAVEN,

SUNFLOWERS AND A RUSHLIGHT,

TINY'S TRICKS AND TOBY'S TRICKS,

THE OWL IN THE IVY BUSH,

* * * * *


How fresh, O Lord, how sweet and clean
Are Thy returns! ev'n as the flowers in spring;
To which, besides their own demean,
The late-past frosts tributes of pleasure bring.
Grief melts away
Like snow in May,
As if there were no such cold thing.

Who would have thought my shrivel'd heart
Could have recover'd greenness? It was gone
Quite under ground; as flowers depart
To see their mother-root, when they have blown;
Where they together
All the hard weather,
Dead to the world, keep house unknown.

* * * * *

O that I once past changing were,
Fast in Thy Paradise, where no flower can wither!
Many a spring I shoot up fair,
Offering at Heaven, growing and groaning thither;
Nor doth my flower
Want a spring shower,
My sins and I joining together.

* * * * *

These are Thy wonders, Lord of love,
To make us see we are but flowers that glide:
Which when we once can find and prove,
Thou hast a garden for us, where to bide.
Who would be more,
Swelling through store,
Forfeit their Paradise by their pride.

--GEORGE HERBERT




MARY'S MEADOW.

CHAPTER I.


Mother is always trying to make us love our neighbors as ourselves.

She does so despise us for greediness, or grudging, or snatching, or
not sharing what we have got, or taking the best and leaving the rest,
or helping ourselves first, or pushing forward, or praising Number
One, or being Dogs in the Manger, or anything selfish. And we cannot
bear her to despise us!