A Fading Flower

To Caroline

It will not live what does not die;
Only the fallen seed will rise;
The withered grass and fading flower
Know well enough the final hour;
And we, My Love, not fallen seed
But fallen man and wife, have need
Beyond mere food and breath, for dust
We are and dust again we must
Become one day, and so I say
Do not despise the flower's way;
For there within its dying gloom
It plants a garden in a tomb
Of earth, and so by fading fast
Gives way to beauty that will last
And grow, like knowledge of the LORD
Within the world–a love outpoured
By Him who faced a final hour
And made His life a fading flower.
And so I give these flowers cut–
What God may bring, I know not what,
For us before our final fall;
But this I know, I will with all
My fading strength and strengthened love
(Made stronger in the Light above)
Hold on to you until we lie
Like seeds in soil, seeds that die,
So light can call them to the sky.