If eyes were made for seeing

On Being Asked Whence Is the Flower

~May 1834

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It isn’t May, and these aren’t rhodies, but they are beautiful. I had to share. Enjoy!

The rest of the poem is at the end.

 

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This is where we sit each night, to regroup, share a meal, and always a few laughs. This is my haven, my preferred place in all the world. Right here. Outside. Breathing in the fresh air (when the farmer next door hasn’t just spread manure).

Sometimes, when tractors have stilled and farmers have quit the day, we hear a different kind of music:

I hope you are lucky as well in that you have beauty in your life, each and every day.

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The Rhodora

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes,
I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods,
Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook,
To please the desert and the sluggish brook.
The purple petals, fallen in the pool,
Made the black water with their beauty gay;
Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool,
And court the flower that cheapens his array.
Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why
This charm is wasted on the earth and sky,
Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing,
Then Beauty is its own excuse for being:
Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose!
I never thought to ask, I never knew:
But, in my simple ignorance, suppose
The self-same Power that brought me there brought you