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I A LILY lies broken and bare on a highway— | |
| Broken and bare and maimed; | |
| And people from many a neighboring byway | |
| Carelessly pass her, shamed. | |
| Come carelessly passing her, lying there broken, | 5 |
| Lying mud-spattered and torn; | |
| Of once glorious beauty now scarcely a token, | |
| She seems man and God-forlorn. | |
| In hope, though desponding, | |
| She lies unresponding | 10 |
| To insults, to jibes, and to jeers; | |
| Herself bruised and battered, | |
| Her children wind-scattered— | |
| A mother bemoaning in tears. | |
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II Lightly the all-crushing Time-wheel rolls o’er her, | 15 |
| Leans lightly, and then rolls on; | |
| Softly the all-burning sunbeams do lower | |
| Their fiercest rays for her, so wan; | |
| Time lends his all-sheltering hand to her—bleeding— | |
| And soon does the sun heal each cut. | 20 |
| But men—Ah! the passing men—push her unheeding, | |
| From out of the refuge rut, | |
| “What dost thou, poor lily, | |
| On highways so hilly, | |
| So far from the land of thy birth? | 25 |
| Thy hopes lead thee whither? | |
| How earnest thou hither— | |
| This hard-hearted, rock-bestrewn earth?” | |
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III “I once was the fairest and happiest flower, | |
| Proudest and haughtiest dame; | 30 |
| By the King’s own hands tended, in his royal bower— | |
| The Lily of Sharon, my name. | |
| But the weeds they rose up in their envy to choke me, | |
| And brought me very low; | |
| And cast on this highway, the passersby broke me, | 35 |
| And filled my cup with woe. | |
| My house, it is Zion; | |
| My hope, Judah’s Lion; | |
| For a while he has left me in pain, | |
| Not for e’er to debase me, | 40 |
| But soon to replace me | |
| In Zion to flourish again.” | |
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