Felicia Hemans in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine Volume 35 1834/The Lilies of the Field

by Felicia Hemans

For other versions of this work, see Sonnets, Devotional and Memorial. VIII. The Lilies of the Field.

Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 35, Page 633

IV.

THE LILIES OF THE FIELD.

"Consider the lilies of the field."

Flowers! when the Saviour's calm benignant eye
Fell on your gentle beauty; when from you
That heavenly lesson for all hearts he drew,
Eternal, universal, as the sky;
Then in the bosom of your purity
A voice He set, as in a temple-shrine,
That Life's quick travellers ne'er might pass you by,
Unwarned of that sweet oracle divine.
And tho' too oft its low celestial sound
By the harsh notes of work-day care is drowned,
And the loud steps of vain unlistening haste,
Yet the great Ocean hath no tone of power
Mightier to reach the soul, in Thought's hushed hour,
Than yours, meek Lilies! chosen thus and graced.