<b>The Flower</b>

Once in a golden hour
I cast to earth a seed.
Up there came a flower,
The people said, a weed.

To and fro they went
Thro’ my garden-bower,
And muttering discontent
Cur’d me and my flower.

Then it grew so tall
It wore a crown of light,
But thieves from o’er the wall
Stole the seed by night.

Sow’d it far and wide
By every town and tower,
Till all the people cried,
“Splendid is the flower.”

Read my little fable:
He that runs may read.
Most can raise the flowers now,
For all have got the seed.

And some are pretty enough,
And some are poor indeed;
And now again the people
Call it but a weed.

When the earth opens up under your feet, be like a seed. Fall down; wait for the rain.

YOU are the big drop of dew under the lotus leaf,
I am the smaller one on its upper side,'
said the dewdrop to the lake.

Here lies one whose name was writ on water.

The first bud of spring sings the other seeds into joining her uprising.

My birthday began with the water-
Birds and the birds of the winged trees flying my name
Above the farms and the white horses
And I rose
In rainy autumn
And walked abroad in a shower of all my days.

"The Lily of the valley, breathing in the humble grass
Answer'd the lovely maid and said: "I am a watry weed,
And I am very small, and love to dwell in lowly vales;
So weak, the gilded butterfly scarce perches on my head;
Yet I am visited from heaven, and he that smiles on all
Walks in the valley and each morn over me spreads his hand,
Saying: 'Rejoice, thou humble grass, thou new-born lily flower,

When a drop draws help from the ocean, it is an ocean in itself, and a little seed, through the outpouring of rain, the favour of the sun and soul-refreshing breeze, will become a tree with the utmost freshness, full of leaves, blossoms and fruits. Therefore do not consider thy capacity and merit, but rely upon the infinite Bounty and trust to His Highness the Almighty.

We call on the gods, and the gods well know
what storms torment us, sailors whirled to nothing.
But if we are to live and reach the haven,
one small seed could grow a mighty tree -

The Sunflowers

Come with me
into the field of sunflowers.
Their faces are burnished disks, their dry spines

creak like ship masts,
their green leaves,
so heavy and many,
fill all day with the sticky

sugars of the sun.
Come with me
to visit the sunflowers,
they are shy

but want to be friends;
they have wonderful stories
of when they were young — the important weather,

the wandering crows.
Don't be afraid
to ask them questions!
Their bright faces,

which follows the sun,
will listen, and all
those rows of seeds — each one a new life! — hope for a deeper acquaintance;
each of them, though it stands
in a crowd of many,
like a separate universe,

is lonely, the long work
of turning their lives
into a celebration
is not easy. Come

and let us talk with those modest faces,
the simple garments of leaves,
the coarse roots in the earth
so uprightly burning.

A seed of hope caught a taste of moisture. Some wishful kernel buried deep, where he was loathe to acknowledge it lest it poison or choke him, began to sprout.

"She often spoke to falling seeds and said, "Ah hope you fall on soft ground," because she had heard seeds saying that to each other as they passed. The familiar people and things had failed her so she hung over the gate and looked up the road towards way off. She knew now that marriage did not make love. Janie's first dream was dead, so she became a woman."

Longing is like the seed
That wrestles in the ground,
Believing if it intercede
It shall at length be found.

The hour and the zone
Each circumstance unknown,
What constancy must be achieved
Before it see the sun!

CONTIMENT’S END At the equinox when the earth was veiled in a late rain, wreathed with wet poppies, waiting spring, The ocean swelled for a far storm and beat its boundary, the ground-swell shook the beds of granite. I gazing at the boundaries of granite and spray, the established sea-marks, felt behind me Mountain and plain, the immense breadth of the continent, before me the mass and doubled stretch of water. I said: You yoke the Aleutian seal-rocks with the lava and coral sowings that flower the south, Over your flood the life that sought the sunrise faces ours that has followed the evening star. The long migrations meet across you and it is nothing to you, you have forgotten us, mother. You were much younger when we crawled out of the womb and lay in the sun’s eye on the tideline. It was long and long ago; we have grown proud since then and you have grown bitter; life retains Your mobile soft unquiet strength; and envies hardness, the insolent quietness of stone. The tides are in our veins, we still mirror the stars, life is your child, but there is in me Older and harder than life and more impartial, the eye that watched before there was an ocean. That watched you fill your beds out of the condensation of thin vapor and watched you change them, That saw you soft and violent wear your boundaries down, eat rock, shift places with the continents. Mother, though my song’s measure is like your surf-beat’s ancient rhythm I never learned it of you. Before there was any water there were tides of fire, both our tones flow from the older fountain.