You may go praise your roses, and talk of heavenly blue,
Or white the garb of innocence, and purity's own hue;
Your roses fade, your white is dimmed, your blue is pale to see,
But here's the truest color--the green, the green for me!
Well chose the ancient Mother, our blooming Mother Earth,
When she could deck her majesty with beauty to its worth;
She keeps her youth, her every spring is fairest ever seen,
For young life's fresh beginnings are always in the green.
Come near it, ye foresaken, and charm your gloom away,
Green is hope, the ever-fresh, and springing from decay;
A thousand winters stamp it out, the humble little grass;--
A thousand times it smiles to see the banished winter pass.
You must fade out the blue from the eternal sky,
You must blot out the sunshine, before the green will die;
Flaunt out, my summer beauty! of colors you are queen
The very heaven's blue and gold must blend to make the green!
There's honor to the lowest, the grasses small and sweet,
O, none should go among them but with the lightest feet;
They're kin to the nobility, the old and stately trees,
Yet love to bless the common soil with kindly charities.
Here's to the meadow grasses--O, bonnily they toss
Their light heads to the bobolink, his hidden nest across;
Here's to the churchyard grasses--O, tenderly they wave,
The certain resurrection they preach from every grave.
