What is the lesson the flower preaches
As it blooms beside the brook?
Could we but listen to what it teaches,
We should need no written book.

Up from the bosom of earth it shoots
To drink the living air;
It opens its heart to the light and heat
And scatters its perfume rare.

" Open thy heart, " the flower is saying,
" To heavenly truth and love;
To God, in man, be aye repaying
The good that he sends from above. "

What is the lesson the streamlet preaches
As it leaps down the mountain-side,
Nor rests nor sleeps, but ever reaches
On to the ocean's tide?

Nor is that its grave. Oh, do not deem
That it resteth even there;
Look up! and see the mountain stream
Transfigured in the air!

" Onward! " the stream saith, " ever free; "
Thy path is still untrod;
Not in what seems thy rest must be,
But in what is , — in God. "