It was only a bunch of flow’rets wild,
Gathered by children one morning fair;
And it went away in the twilight gray
To the mighty city’s din and glare.
And the great grand flow’rs in the market smiled
At the little bunch of flow’rets wild;
And the crowding passers had but a care
For the many flow’rs that were rich and rare.
A mother stopt in the market place,
She saw the flow’rets shining there,
And she thought of her child, with his wan, thin face,
Pining all day in the London square.
She left those lordly, blazing flow’rs,
She thought of her far-off childhood hours;
She took that bunch of flow’rets wild—
Her dearest gift to her crippled child.
And she spoke to him of the thousand ones
Who toiled in the city hour by hour,
Who never had seen the country suns,
And never had plucked a country flow’r,
And a new light shone in his mournful eyes,
He hushed his sad, complaining cries;
For that little bunch of flow’rets wild
Had changed the life of the crippled child.