Spare My Flower

O spare my flower, my gentle flower,
The slender creature of a day!

O spare my flower, my gentle flower,
The slender creature of a day!
Let it bloom out its little hour,
And pass away.
Too soon its fleeting charms must lie
Decayed, unnoticed, overthrown.
O hasten not its destiny,
Too like thy own.

The breeze will roam this way to-morrow,
And sigh to find his playmate gone:
The bee will come its sweets to borrow,
And meet with none.
O spare! and let it still outspread
Its beauties to the passing eye,
And look up from its lowly bed
Upon the sky.

O spare my flower!  Thou know’st not what
Thy undiscerning hand would tear:
A thousand charms thou notest not
Lie treasured there.
Not Solomon, in all his state,
Was clad like nature’s simplest child;
Nor could the world combined create
One floweret wild.

Spare then this humble monument
Of an Almight’s power and skill;
And let it at His shrine present
Its homage still.
He made it who makes nought in vain:
He watches it who watches thee;
And he can best its date ordain
Who bade it be.

O spare my flower-for it is frail;
A timid, weak, imploring thing
And let it still upon the gale
Its moral fling.
That moral thy reward shall be:
Catch the suggestion, and apply:
“Go, live like me,” it cries, “like me
“Soon, soon to die.”

Henry Francis Lyte

Peace Rose