The Aloe Plant

Away in the sunny clime?

By humble growth of a hundred years

It reaches its blooming time;

And then a wondrous bud at its crown

Breaks into a thousand flowers;

This floral queen in its blooming seen

Is the pride of the tropical bowers;

But the plant to the flower is a sacrifice,

For it blooms but once, and in blooming dies.

† Have you heard the tale of the pelican,

The Arab’s Gomel el Bahr,

That dwells in the African solitudes

Where the birds that live lonely are?

Have you heard how it loves its tender young,

And cares and toils for their good?

It brings them water from fountains afar

And fishes the seas for their food.

In famine it feeds them what love can devise —

The blood of its bosom — and, feeding them, dies.

           †Have you heard the tale they tell of the swan,

The snow-white bird of the lake?

It noiselessly floats on the silvery wave,

It silently sits in the brake;

For it saves its song till the end of life,

And then, in the soft, still even,

‘Mid the golden light of the setting sun

It sings as it soars into heaven,

And the blessed notes fall back from the skies —

‘Tis its only song, for in singing it dies.

† You have heard the tales. Shall I tell you one,

A greater and better than all?

Have you heard of Him whom the Heavens adore,

Before whom the hosts of them fall?

How He left the choirs and anthems above

For earth in its wailings and woes,

And suffered the shame and pain of the cross

To die for the life of His foes.

His death is our life, His loss is our gain —

The joy for the tear — the peace for the pain.