Bring flowers, young flowers, for the festal board,
To wreath the cup ere the wine is pour'd!
Bring flowers! they are springing in wood and vale:
Their breath floats out on the southern gale,
And the touch of the sunbeam hath waked the rose,
To deck the hall where the bright wine flows.

Bring flowers to strew in the conqueror's path!
He hath shaken thrones with his stormy wrath:
He comes with the spoils of nations back,
The vines lie crush'd in his chariot's track,
The turf looks red where he won the day.
Bring flowers to die in the conqueror's way!

Bring flowers to the captive's lonely cell!
They have tales of the joyous woods to tell—
Of the free blue streams, and the glowing sky,
And the bright world shut from his languid eye;
They will bear him a thought of the sunny hours,
And the dream of his youth. Bring him flowers, wild flowers!

Bring flowers, fresh flowers, for the bride to wear!
They were born to blush in her shining hair.
She is leaving the home of her childhood's mirth,
She hath bid farewell to her father's hearth,
Her place is now by another's side.
Bring flowers for the locks of the fair young bride!

Bring flowers, pale flowers, o'er the bier to shed,
A crown for the brow of the early dead!
For this through its leaves hath the white rose burst,
For this in the woods was the violet nursed!
Though they smile in vain for what once was ours,
They are love's last gift. Bring ye flowers, pale flowers!

Bring flowers to the shrine where we kneel in prayer—
They are nature's offering, their place is there!
They speak of hope to the fainting heart,
With a voice of promise they come and part,
They sleep in dust through the wintry hours,
They break forth in glory. Bring flowers, bright flowers!

Out in the acres underneath the sun,
The full-blown cotton, after months of rain,
Breaks from the boll and longs to kiss the ground.
Wearied with pain and blinded by the dust,
A child plods slowly down the long white rows,
A sack hung on his back, and in his eyes
The press and greed of ages and the world,
But evermore within his heart a hope,
And on his lips a trill and snatch of song.

What knows this child of how to give and take,
Of syntax or of places on the map?
What does he think of Isaac Newton's law;
What does he care for Shakspere and the light?
How can he measure in the after-years
The scale of justice or be held for sin?
Around him in God's glory and the light
A passionate bird hurls its defiant soul
Forth to the clouds in mocking of the blue;
But what is this to him whom in the years
A long, long wilderness of white awaits?
Around him sings the silence of the dawn,
Above him all the symphonies of heaven;
But what to him the glory or the gleam,
What means the music of the spheres to him?

Ye men who own the cotton-fields and plains,
Who run the whirring factories and the mills,
Weaving your wealth of heart-strings and of tears,
What is the heritage ye give this child?
What will ye say in that hereafter day,
When far beyond the working of the world,
Within the circuit of a righteous judge,
He greets you in the thunder-clouds of heaven?