WATER LILIES.
FAIR water-lily, with heart of gold,
With dainty apparel, laid fold on fold,
Kissed by the ripples that come and go,
Tell me, whence cometh thy raiment of snow?
Dark is the soil where thy rootlets twine,
Whence come thy beauty and fragrance divine?
Waving aloft at the sweep of the tide,
Pure as a virgin and fair as a bride.
Often thy house is the stagnant mere,
That gathers its blackness year by year;
Shining above it in stainless white,
Swingiest thou ever a thing of light.
Down in this great wide world below,
Where teeming millions go to and fro,
Angels look ever and wait to bear
Their tidings above of the robes we wear.
And nightly the shining ones sing on high,
And the music rings clear through the starlit sky,
"Down in the world, 'mid the 'mire and clay,'
Souls have been walking in white to-day."
Lavilla E. Allen, in Christian Woman.