For our poem today, I’d thought I will start doing more classical pieces. After all, the the tea hour is a hour dedicated to relaxation and appreciating the beauty that surrounds you.
Thus, this poem is more a reflection about life. Sometimes we all have to be reminded that our lives are so short that we really must make everyday count.
So without further ado, here is Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem,
The Reaper and the Flower
There is a Reaper, whose name is Death,
And, with his sickle keen,
He reaps the bearded grain at a breath,
And the flowers the grow between.
“Shall I have naught that fair?” saith he;
“Have naught but the bearded grain?
Though the breath of these flowers is sweet to me,
I will give them all back again.”
He gazed at the flowers with tearful eyes,
He kissed their drooping leaves;
It was for the Lord of Paradise
He bound them in his sheaves.
“My Lord has need of these flowers gay,”
The Reaper said, and smiled;
“Dear tokens of the earth are they,
Where he was once a child.
“They shall all bloom in fields of light,
Transplanted by my care,
And saints, upon their garments white,
These sacred blossoms wear.”
And the mother gave, in tears and pain,
The flowers she most did love;
She knew she should find them all again
In the fields of light above .
O, not in cruelty, not in wrath,
The Reaper came that day,
‘Twas an angel visited the green earth,
And took the flowers away.
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