Herbert’s speaker watches his soul move through seasons of death and revival. Spring returns — fresh, sweet, clean — melting grief like snow in May, and he marvels how his shrivelled heart could turn green again. This is God’s wonder: killing and quickening in a single hour, turning a funeral bell into a chime. He yearns to be past changing, forever in a Paradise where no flower withers, yet growth is checked by divine anger — a frost that burns. In old age he buds once more, grateful for dew, rain, and the delight of versing. It hardly seems possible he is the same man on whom tempests fell. The final revelation is gentle: we are only flowers that glide, but when we truly know this, God has a garden where we may abide. Pride, swelling through store, makes us forfeit that Paradise. The mood moves from awed gratitude through fearful awe to a quiet, settled trust.
The Flower — Summary
How fresh, O Lord, how sweet and clean Are thy returns! ev'n as the flowers in spring; To which, besides their own demean, The late-past frosts tributes of pleasure bring. Grief melts away Like snows in May, As if there were no such cold thing.
Who would have thought my shrivelled heart Could have recovered greenness? It was gone Quite under ground; as flowers depart To see their mother-root, when they have blown; Where they together All the hard weather, Dead to the world, keep house unknown.
These are thy wonders, Lord of power, Killing and quick'ning, bringing down to hell And up to heaven in an hour; Making a chiming of a passing-bell. We say amiss, This or that is: Thy word is all, if we could spell.
O that I once past changing were, Fast in thy Paradise, where no flower can wither! Many a spring I shoot up fair, Off'ring at heav'n, growing and groaning thither: Nor doth my flower Want a spring shower, My sins and I joining together.
But while I grow in a straight line, Still upwards bent, as if heav'n were mine own, Thy anger comes, and I decline: What frost to that? What pole is not the zone, Where all things burn, When thou dost turn, And the least frown of thine is shown?
And now in age I bud again, After so many deaths I live and write; I once more smell the dew and rain, And relish versing: O my only light, It cannot be That I am he On whom thy tempests fell all night.
These are thy wonders, Lord of love, To make us see we are but flowers that glide; Which when we once can find and prove, Thou hast a garden for us, where to bide. Who would be more, Swelling through store, Forfeit their Paradise by their pride.