by GEORGE COOPER
(originally published March 8, 1887)
HAVE you ever heard what the fairies say,
Little girl, little boy? Oh, hear and heed!
For each smile you wear on your face today
There's a flower grows; for each frown a weed.
So to make this world like a garden bright,
Little girl, little boy, keep frowns away.
Oh, the loving lips that can say tonight,
We have scattered flowers o'er the earth today!
The image above shows a red-winged blackbird (Agelaius phoeniceus) perched on top of a wildflower stalk (it looks like a goldenrod not yet in bloom).
These throwback photos were taken in 2012 on a walk through the DuPont Gordon Richards Park located near the waterfront in Whitby, Ontario. The park is a great place to spot many diffent types of birds and wildflowers, such as the strikingly pretty but incredibly invasive broad-leaved everlasting-pea or Lathyrus latifolius (below).
Photos © FieldandGarden.com. All rights reserved.
Public domain poem is from my personal collection. All digitized poems by FieldandGarden.com are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Please credit and link back to FieldandGarden.com as your source if you use or share this work.