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Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Tiger Lily




Happy Birthday Aaron John


A Father's Prayer 
In Memory of Aaron
February 19, 1986 - May 20, 2007

Aaron, our son, our brother
Our friend, our love.
God took you erly in the Morning
Our son to shine on us no more.
Aaron, our lovely Aaron.
His drums will be played for our Lord
His smiling face and so much more.
God, please take his hand
And lift him on your shoulders.
Love him as he has loved all of us.
Mary, Our Mother Mary,
Protect our son and keep him safe.
Cleanse his scraped up face.
Aaron our lovely Aaron
You now can be with our sister Karen
And baby Rose ...



Tiger Lily

Gray are the gardens of our Celtic lands
Dreaming and gray.
Tended by the devotion of pale hands,
On barren crags, or by disastrous sands,
That night and day
Are drenched with bitter spray.
There rosemary and thyme are plentiful,
Larkspur that lovers cull,
Love-in-the-mist that is most sorrowful.
Flowers so wistful that our teardrops start ....
Scarcely one understands that regal, rare,
Bravely the tiger lily blossoms there,
Bravely apart.

Our gardens are enamored of the spring
Of silver rain.
The cloudy green of buds slow-burgeoning,
The sorrow of last apple blooms that cling
And are not fain
To yield their fruit again.
We do not long for tropic pageantry,
Yet surge with love to see
The tiger lily's muted ecstasy.
Watered by mist and lashed by wind-blown rime,
She is no alien thing; but vivid, free,
She has no heed for paler rosemary,
Larkspur or thyme.

It is in vain they worship her who knows
Pity nor pride.
Their petals whirl down every wind that goes
South to the palms or northward to the snows,
Mourning they died
So distant from her side.
But the brave tiger lily blossoms on,
Never to be undone
Till the last rosemary and thyme are gone.
Tattered by autumn storms, she will not fling
Herself to sullen foes.  The winter rain
Alone can beat her down, to bloom again
Spring after spring.

Walter Adolphe Roberts










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