Poems Sigourney 1834/The Desert Flower

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For other versions of this work, see The Desert Flower.
4020219Poems Sigourney 1834The Desert Flower1834Lydia Sigourney



THE DESERT FLOWER.


A weary course the traveller held,
    As on with footstep lone,
By scientific zeal impelled
    He tracked the torrid zone.

His thoughts were with his native glades,
    His father's pleasant halls,
Where darkly peer through woven shades
    The abbey's ivied walls.

But to the far horizon's bound,
    Wide as the glance could sweep,
The sandy desert spread around
    Like one vast, waveless deep.

What saw he 'mid that dreary scene,
    To wake his rapture wild?
A flower!—A flower!—with glorious mien,
    Like some bright rainbow's child.

Kneeling he clasped it to his breast,
    He praised its wonderous birth,
Fresh, fragile, beautiful and blest,
    The poetry of earth.

No secret fountain through its veins
    Sustaining vigor threw,
No dew refreshed those arid plains,
    Yet there the stranger grew.


It seemed as if some tender friend,
    Beloved in childhood's day,
A murmur through those leaves did send,
    A smile to cheer his way:

And fervently a prayer for those
    In his own distant bower,
Like incense from his heart uprose
    Beside that Desert Flower.

For thus do Nature's hallowed charms
    Man's softened soul inspire,
As to the infant in her arms
    The mother points its sire.