English poem
A Mystery
by Gabriel Setoun (1861–1930)
Flowers from clods of clay and mud! Flowers so bright, and grass so green! Tell me, blade, and leaf, and bud, How it is you're all so clean.
If my fingers touch these sods, See, they're streaked with sticky earth; Yet you spring from clayey clods, Pure, and fresh, and fair from birth.
Do you wash yourselves at night, In a bath of diamond dew, That you look so fresh and bright When the morning dawns on you?
God, perhaps, sends summer showers, When the grass grows grey for rain, To wash the faces of His flowers, And bid His fields be green again.
Tell me, blade, and leaf, and bud; Flowers so fair, and grass so green, Growing out of clay and mud, How it is you're all so clean.