Page:Poems of home and country (IA poemsofhomecount01smit).pdf/365



AIR flowers that bloom so richly, As if the summer's breath Were wafted o'er their birthplace, And not the chill of death! I hail the joyful emblem,— Fit cheer for hours of gloom,— Earth has its wintry trials, But 'tis not all a tomb.

I listen in the evening To the sighing of the gale; I watch the heaping snowdrifts, And hear the rattling hail; And I think, with grateful spirit, What a glorious God is ours, Who is mighty in the tempest, And gentle in the flowers.

The piercing blasts are blowing; But every smiling cup Breathes forth such charming fragrance, And looks so sweetly up, I forget the shortened daylight, And the wintry chill and gloom, And heaven seems hovering near me, With its everlasting bloom.

And I see amid the darkness Of the path that mortals tread, In the land of grief and partings, Of the mourning and the dead,