I saw a miracle to-day! <br />Where the September sunshine lay <br />Languidly as a lost desire <br />Upon a sumach's fading fire, <br />Where calm some pallid asters trod, <br />Indifferent, past a golden-rod, <br />Beside a gray-haired thistle set,- <br />A perfect purple violet. <br /> <br /> <br />I wonder what it were to miss <br />The life of spring, and live like this? <br />To bloom so lone, to bloom so late, <br />And were it worth the while to wait <br />So long for such a little day? <br />And were it not a better way <br />Never, indeed, (worse might befall,) <br />To be a violet at all? <br /> <br /> <br />So lonely when the spring was gone, <br />So calm when autumn splendors shone, <br />So peaceful midst the blazing flowers, <br />So blessed through the golden hours, <br />So might have bloomed my love for thee. <br />It is not, and it cannot be,- <br />It cannot, must not be,-and yet, <br />I picked for thee the violet.<br /><br />Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/an-autumn-violet/
