Edward's Spring Poem About Orra

                      Spring.

The frowns of the winter are past

and spring with its smiles comes at last-

All mild is the zephyr that blows,

And all lovely the flower of the rose.

How sweet to the soul and how soft to the eye,

The green of the fields and the blue of the sky!-

And a spring to my heart and my soul now appears,-

And gone is the winter of doubts and of fears:-

              For my love is come!

And the smile on her face & the joy in her eye

With the hues of creation in sweetness may vie.

On her heart now no more hangs a gloom,

But Religious fair flowrets there bloom.

And the plant of affection yet lives!

And now puts forth its blossoms & thrives:

     Though the storms on it frown’d,

     And the winds round it roar’d:

     Though the blast strain’d its root,

     And the frost nipp’d its shoot;

Yet so firm ‘twas entwin’d round the strings of the heart

That, though it might totter, it never would part!

     “But rather like the mountain oak,

     “Tempest shaken, rooted fast,

     “It gather’d strength from every stroke,

     “While it wrestled with the blast.”

O, may the pure waters that come from on high,

From the fount of religion that never is dry,

Cause its roots with new vigor to thrive

And its branches to flower while we live:

And when life’s silver link shall be burst

[And our bodies consign’d to the dust,

May it  it then be transform’d to a milder abode

Forever to bloom in the garden of God.]

                                                                          E.