Reflecting its azure blue,
        Flowers, bright flowers,
    Brightest earth ever knew! 
    Cheering the desolate,
        Flowers, bright flowers! 
    Coming with fragrance fraught,
    From Heaven’s own breezes caught,
        Flowers, bright flowers,
    Teachers of holy thought! 
    Borne to the curtained room,
        Flowers, bright flowers! 
    Where the sick longs for light,
    Then, for the shades of night,
        Flowers, bright flowers,
    Gladdening the wearied sight! 
    High on the mountain-top,
        Flowers, bright flowers! 
    Low in sequestered vale,
    On cliff, mid rock, in dale,
        Flowers, bright flowers,
    Ye do prevail!

FORGET ME NOT.

    Forget me not when other lips
        Shall whisper love to thee;
    Forget me not when others twine
        Their chaplets for thy brow;
    Forget me not, for I am thine,
        Forever onward true as now,
    As long as time shall be. 
    There may be words thou mayest doubt,
        But when I tell thee “I am thine,”
    Believe the heart’s assurance true,
        In sorrow and in mirth
    Forever it doth turn to you,
        Confiding, trusting in thy worth. 
    Thou wilt, I know, be mine.

WHAT IS TRUTH?

Long, long ago, one whose life had been one of goodness-whose every act had been that of charity and good will-was persecuted, hated and maligned!  He came with new hopes.  He held up a light, whose rays penetrated far into the future, and disclosed a full and glorious immortality to the long doubting, troubled soul of man.

He professed to commune with angels!  He had healed the sick; he had given sight to the blind; caused the lame to walk; opened prison-doors, and had preached the Gospel to the poor.  Those he chose for his companions were from humble rank.  Their minds had not become enslaved to any creed; not wedded to any of the fashionable and popular forms of the day, nor immovably fixed to any of the dogmas of the schools.  He chose such because their minds were free and natural; “and they forsook all and followed him.”

Among the rulers, the wealthy and the powerful, but few believed in him, or in the works he performed.  To them he was an impostor.  In speaking of his labors some cant phrase fell from their wise lips, synonymous with the “it is all a humbug” of our day.  His healing of the sick was denied; or, if admitted, was said to be some lucky circumstance of fate.  His opening of the eyes of the blind was to them a mere illusion; the supposed cure, only an operation of the imagination.

All his good deeds were underrated; and those who, having seen with their own eyes, and heard with their own ears, were honest enough to believe and openly declare their belief; were looked upon by the influential and those in high places as most egregiously deceived and imposed upon.