“The flowers appear on the earth.”
“How they grow; they toil not neither do they spin.”
A poet called flowers “the favorites of Heaven!” They may be, but I am sure of this, they are the favorites of earth. Everybody loves flowers. If anyone were to say that he did not care for flowers, we should think there was something seriously the matter with him.
Look at the fields in springtime, covered with buttercups and daisies, graceful lady smocks and purple clover. Was there ever a carpet that could compare with these for loveliness?
This year the roots of all the trees were well drenched with April rains, so that plentiful supplies of sap ran up into all the leaves and buds. Then there came day after day of warm May sunshine the whole month through, to the utter astonishment of the oldest inhabitant of Darwen, who had never seen such a sunny-faced, merry month of May in all his life before. And the result was that the flowering trees in Bold Venture Park excelled themselves. It was a real feast of color, a banquet of beauty. All people that came and looked were satisfied, and yet nothing was taken away save the picture of it; as many more might have come and found the same pleasure in the loveliness.
Of course, you were among the visitors; you went up to the fountain, and saw the hawthorns red against the lawn, and the drooping branches of the witch elm heavy with flowers of green. And then, you turned round and looked at the bank of rhododendrons, hawthorns, and laburnums that stretched up to the roadway, and at the dark face of the old quarry cliff just peeping out here and there from among the masses of foliage and flowers that almost covered it.
No King’s robes at Coronation ever looked so gloriously beautiful as the laburnums. Tailors and seamstresses were at work for months on the dresses and robes worn at the Court on the Coronation days; many a laborious and anxious hour they had, and at close of day often went home tired, so tired that they could hardly sleep; but, with all their skill and pains, and notwithstanding all the money spent on silk and satin, ermine and lace, gold and pearls, they were not able to make anything so perfect, so wonderful, so strange, so beautiful as the flowers on one of those trees.
The Master said, “Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.”
Let me try to tell you why.
1. No one saw the workmen that made the flowers. God’s workmen were busy during the Winter and the Spring upon those robes of Summer, and yet they were out of sight and out of hearing all the time. The work went on in perfect quietness.
If you had gone into any of the rooms where the Court dresses were being made, you would have seen the workers, and would have heard their voices and the sounds of tools and machines.
But not so with the flowers; the gardeners were often in the park, digging and planting and pruning and tidying, but they did not do the real work. That was all out of sight.
2. These clothes grew out of the trees.
For the Coronation robes, the ermine may have come from the Arctic regions, the wool from Australia, the cotton from Egypt, the gold from America, the diamonds from Africa, and the pearls from the West Indies. And when the garments were finished, they were put on, I suppose, by maids of honor and gentlemen of the royal chambers.
But the red blossoms grew out of the hawthorns, the golden chains grew out of the laburnums, the magenta robes grew out of the rhododendrons; little by little, the trees made their own clothes, and put them on from within. If you ask me how it was done; well, that’s another matter!
3. These flowers help the life of the trees.
Our King and Queen looked very grand during the great Coronation ceremonies in Westminster Abbey, but I think they must have felt rather nervous and anxious, and, if the truth were told, they really began to enjoy the day when it was all over, and they were able to take off those clothes.
Now the trees are never so happy as when they are in flower. You see, they cannot move about the world, so they have to win other things to come to them, and bring them what they want. They need the help of the bee, the ant, the fly, the butterfly. And so, these flowers are made with perfumes to attract, with beautiful colors to please, and with sweet nectar to persuade their little visitors to come and stay a long time, and enjoy themselves until their business is finished. And that is how the flowers grow into seeds, and the seeds spread the new trees into other soils.
These are some of the reasons why the garments of flowers are more wonderful than any worn by kings and queens. We are always finding out new flowers, and new things about the old ones. And everything that we discover makes us wonder more and more at the power and wisdom of our Father in heaven.
“He who grows them, great or small,
Deems them none too many,
And says, smiling on them all,
‘I can spare not any.’”