They blossom brightly, straight and tall,
Against the mossy garden wall,
⁠Beneath the poplar-trees;
The sunbeams kiss each golden face,
Their green leaves wave with airy grace,
⁠In fresh September's breeze.

On one fair disc of gold and brown,
A purple butterfly lights down;
⁠A sister-blossom yields
Her honey store, content to be
A late provider for the bee,
⁠Flown here from clover fields.

Each dawning day, when climbs the sun,
And steadfast till his course is run,
⁠These royal blossoms raise
Their grand, wide-opened, golden eyes,
To watch his journey through the skies,
⁠Undaunted by his blaze.

The butterfly may sleep or soar,
The bee may steal their honey store,
⁠But still the flowers gaze on.
With burning looks of changeless love,
Toward the day-god, high above,
⁠Until the day is gone.

Fair maid beside the garden wall!
Thy lithe form copies, straight and tall,
⁠The sunflower's stately grace:
The golden tresses of thine hair,
Like sunflower-rays do weave a fair
⁠Bright halo round thy face.

And through their shadows looking down,
We find thine eyes of softest brown
⁠Like sunflowercentres are;
We watch thee standing in the bloom,
The God-given sunflower of our home,
⁠Yet meek as evening's star!

Ah, watching thus, high thoughts arise,
Deep thoughts, that fill our time-worn eyes
⁠With fearful, hopeful tears.
God give thee sunshine on thy way!
God crown thy happy summer day
⁠With peaceful autumn years!

In due time coming, on thy breast
Love's purple butterfly may rest,
⁠And nestle close to thee;
And ere thy summer-time is o'er,
Thy sweetness may yield honey store,
⁠For life's brown working-bee.

But evermore, though love should come
And fold his pinions in thine home,
⁠Lift thy calm gaze above!
Mark thou the sunflower’s constant eye,
And follow through life’s changing sky,
⁠The sun of faith and love.

Drift, let it drift; the cords are snapped that curbed it;
The rigid anchor holds that bark no more;
Th' impatient sails whose fluttering so disturbed it
No longer flap beside the sombre shore.
Out of the haven, 'thwart the roadstead gleaming,
Beyond the far bright offing hath it passed;
Still of some golden goal a-dreaming, dreaming,
O'er the wide deep that light bark drifts at last.

Let it drift on, nor blast nor billow checking;
No whirlpool to engulf, no rock to break;
The sea a mirror smooth for its bedecking,
The sky a blue pavilion for its sake.
On let it drift, the laughing mermaids weaving
Fantastic rings its devious course around;
And the gay syrens mocking its believing
With sweet, delusive ecstasies of sound.

Yet bright skies change; Hope's refluent tides run widely,
And Fortune wrecks great wonders with her wand.
So on some wintry eve, while I am idly
Counting the dusk waves on the sombre strand,
Haply before me from the offing shaded
A helmless bark shall drift in shattered state,
Its golden name, "The Mary," blurred and faded,
Tangle and bitter brine its only freight.

The rain is making rings on the river,
And the dead leaves in the black trees shiver;
The desolate sparrows under the shed
Are dreaming of summer and crumbs of bread.

Thin, dirty children play in the gutter;
A row of rogues by the wall-side utter
Their daily curses, and "watch for a job,"
And know they have something to earn or rob.

O the rain, the rain, in cold winter-time!
And the bitter bread that is bought by crime!
 The fog and the frost from morning till night,
And no coal to burn or candle to light!

It is coming, coming: summer is dead;
The comfortless clouds are thick over head;
And snow will soon come to whiten the moor,
And the poor will remember that they are poor.